«* 
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Cantafco  JDomtno  Canticum  iiobum 


J 


ohn  Bannister  Tabb 
The  Priest-Poet 


By  M.  S.  PINE 

Author  of  ALMA  MATER,  AND 
OTHER  DRAMAS 


'They  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin** — 
The  blossom-Thoughts  that  here  within 
The  garden  of  my  soul  arise. 

Immortelles 


Published/or 

Georgetown  Visitation  Convent 

Washington,  D.  C. 

1915 


Copyright,   1915 

Munder-Thomsen  Company 

All  rights  reserved 


Printed  by 

Munder-Thomsen  Press 
Baltimore       New  York 


To 

Saint  Joseph,  the  Spouse  of  Mary 
Beloved  of  Heaven  and  Earth 

This  Little  Garden  of  Father  Tabb's  Poesy 

Is  Gratefully  and  Lovingly 

Dedicated 


331051 


FOREWORD 

A  miniature  painted  in  France  in  1578  by 
the  artist  Hilliard  bears  the  inscription:  "If  one 
could  but  paint  his  mind!"  Happier  than 
the  artist,  the  lyric  singer  can  paint  his  soul  in 
his  poems,  and  our  Priest-Poet  has  painted  his 
in  most  exquisite  miniature,  so  that  the  world  is 
better  for  the  gift. 

In  this  little  volume  I  have  been  content,  in 
the  main,  to  put  forth  the  delicate  work  of  his 
poetic  brush,  as  my  readers  will  agree.  Indeed, 
I  have  more  than  once  accused  myself  of  pre 
sumption  in  undertaking  to  comment  upon  the 
rare  creations  of  one  so  far  above  me  as  the 
Reverend  John  Bannister  Tabb.  But  admira 
tion  for  the  poet  and  respect  for  his  memory, 
combined  with  my  desire  to  make  him  known 
and  loved,  especially  by  the  young,  have  urged 
me  to  so  unequal  a  task. 

I  may  add  that  these  chapters  are  founded 
upon  a  lecture  I  gave  to  the  young  ladies  of  a 
certain  convent  in  1907,  chiefly  upon  the  poems, 
for  my  knowledge  of  Father  Tabb's  biogra 
phy  was  then  even  more  meager  than  it  will 
appear  to  those  who  peruse  these  pages.  Last 
year,  1914, 1  was  asked  by  Mr.  Charles  Phillips, 
A.M.,  the  poet  and  journalist,  to  enlarge  the 
lecture  for  "The  Monitor,"  of  San  Francisco; 


and  since  the  appearance  of  the  little  serial, 
friends,  readers,  and  teachers  of  repute  have 
prevailed  upon  me  to  put  it  into  permanent 
form.  I  comfort  myself  with  the  hope  that 
ere  long  others  will  take  up  the  task,  too  long 
neglected — for  six  suns  have  gone  their  round 
since  our  poet  took  his  flight  to  a  higher  land — 
and  with  more  easy  means  of  research  than 
Providence  has  placed  in  my  power,  will  set 
before  the  admirers  of  the  Poet  of  the  Quatrain 
a  worthy  portrait  of  the  man  and  a  worthy  esti 
mate  of  his  poetry  and  its  influence. 

I  take  pleasure  in  acknowledging  my  indebt 
edness  to  the  Right  Reverend  Mgr.  T.  S.  Dug- 
gan,  V.G.,  of  Hartford,  for  valued  aids  to 
ward  the  biography  of  the  poet,  as  also  to  the 
Reverend  Waldo  Hasenfus,  and  Mr.  Francis 
A.  Litz;  I  thank  the  Reverend  D.  A.  Connor 
for  a  copy  of  his  eulogy  pronounced  over  the 
remains  of  Father  Tabb;  and  my  special  grati 
tude  is  due  to  the  Very  Reverend  M.  F.  Din- 
neen,  S.S.,  D.D.,  the  able,  learned  and  kindly 
president  of  St.  Charles  College,  for  continual 
help  and  encouragement  in  my  "labor  of  love." 

In  conclusion,  I  would  ask  my  kind  readers 
to  seek  in  the  last  chapter  an  urgent  motive  for 
the  present  publication,  which  is  to  be  devoted 
to  the  attainment  of  the  object  there  explained. 

M.  S.  PINE. 


CONTENTS 

I-  PAGE 

Birth  and  Boyhood 1 1 

II. 
The  Boy-Soldier  of  the  Confederacy 16 

in. 
Prison  Life.     Sidney  Lanier 19 

IV. 

Release     from    Captivity.       Engages    as 
Teacher.     Alfred  A.  Curtis 22 

v. 

Enters  the  True  Fold.     Studies   for  the 
Priesthood 25 

VI. 

Professor  in  St.  Charles  College.     uBone 
Rules."    With  the  Muses 28 

VII. 

Characteristics.     His  Gift  of  Humor.  ...      32 

VIII. 

Theological   Studies.      Ordination   to   the 
Priesthood 38 

IX. 

Father  Tabb's  Poems  Center  in  God.  ...      41 

x. 

His  First  Published  Volume  of  Poems.  .      45 


XL  PAGE 

"Poems."        "An     Octave     to      Mary." 
"Lyrics."     "The  Rosary  in  Verse" 49 

XII. 

Mrs.     Meynell's     Selection     of     Verses. 
"Quips  and  Quiddits."     "Later  Poems"     53 

XIII. 

Estimate  of  His  Poems.     His  Optimistic 
Spirit 58 

XIV. 

His  Love  of  Nature.    Flower  Poems.  ...      63 

xv. 
Floral  Lyrics — Continued 67 

XVI. 

Bird   Lyrics 71 

XVII. 

Babyhood  and  Youth  in  Poesy 75 

XVIII. 

Father    Tabb's    Friendship    with    Sidney 
Lanier 8 1 

XIX. 

Friendship     with     Bishop     Curtis.      Uni 
versal  Brotherhood 86 

XX. 

Feasts  of  the  Church.    Christmas  Poems.      91 


XXI.  PAGE 

Passion  Flowers  and  Easter  Lilies 95 

XXII. 

Mary  in  His  Verse.     Dogmas 98 

XXIII. 

Consideration  of  Other  Poems.    Tragedy 
and  Fancy 102 

XXIV. 

The   Sonnets 107 

XXV. 

Personality  of  the  Poet in 

XXVI. 

A  Sacrifice.      "Consecration" 117 

XXVII. 

The  Poet's  Failing  Sight 123 

XXVIII. 

Blindness.     Decline  of  Health 128 

XXIX. 

Death  of  Father  Tabb.    Funeral  Eulogy.    133 

XXX. 

Supplementary.      Father   Tabb's    Sermon 
on  The  Assumption 144 

XXXI. 

St.  Charles  and  the  Sulpitians.    A  Memo 
rial  to  the  Poet-Priest 152 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 
THE  PRIEST-POET 

CHAPTER  I 

BIRTH  AND   BOYHOOD 

Poetry  is  the  fragrance  of  the  flower  of  beauty. 
Who  can  analyze  fragrance,  define  it,  describe 
it?  It  seems  like  a  spiritual  essence,  so  subtle 
and  elusive  in  its  sweetness,  so  exquisitely  pene 
trating,  often  so  delicious  and  soothing  in  its 
effects.  Now  if  beauty  be  the  flower  of  God's 
creation  and  poesy  its  perfume,  I  think  of  all 
our  modern  poets  none  has  entered  more  deeply 
into  league  with  that  divine  beauty — none  has 
stolen  from  its  heart  sweeter  perfume  to  scatter 
in  little  phials  of  verse  all  over  the  world  than 
John  Bannister  Tabb, — Father  Tabb,  to  use  the 
name  dearer  to  our  hearts,  which  designates  the 
Catholic  priest  and  poet  of  whom  we  are  so 
justly  proud. 

Father  Tabb's  "Lyrics"  breathe  the  music  of 
Ariel  and  exercise  just  as  magical  an  influence 
over  the  thought  and  fancy;  he  discerns  spiritual 
truth,  indeed  is  ever  seeking  it  hidden  under  the 
lovely  forms  and  types  of  nature,  and  he  out 
pours  his  findings  in  a  wealth  of  analogy  which 
becomes  a  perennial  treasure  of  moral  musing 

[ii] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

and  lofty  aspiration  to  the  thoughtful  mind, — 
one  imbued,  perhaps  I  must  add,  with  a  love  of 
poetry  and  the  subtle  spiritual  sense  often  found 
even  in  the  heart  of  a  child. 

Father  Tabb's  boyhood,  I  think,  must  have 
been  spent  with  nature  and  with  his  own 
thoughts — beautiful  hidden  dreams  and  long 
ings  which  no  one,  perhaps,  not  even  his  mother 
suspected.  A  strong,  tender,  beautiful,  womanly 
character  that  mother  was,  an  honor  to  the 
sunny  Southland  which  has  given  to  our  country 
such  noble  types  of  womanhood.  The  poet's 
second  volume  of  "Lyrics"  is  dedicated: 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  MY  MOTHER 
The  Cowslip 

It  brings  my  mother  back  to  me, 
Thy  frail,  familiar  form  to  see, 

Which  was  her  homely  joy; 
And  strange  that  one  so  weak  as  thou 
Shouldst  lift  the  veil  that  sunders  now 

The  mother  and  the  boy. 

And  still  more  he  glorifies  that  mother  by 
inference  in  the  poem, 

WOMAN 

Shall  she  come  down  and  on  our  level  stand  ? 

Nay,  God  forbid  it !     May  a  mother's  eyes — 
Love's  earliest  home,  the  heaven  of  Babyland, 

Forever  bend  above  us  as  we  rise ! 

All  the  man  is  there — he  goes  beyond  the  en 
chanted  woods  of  chivalry,  where  the  knight 

[12] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

bowed  down  to  womanhood,  back  to  the  heaven 
of  babyland  and  mother  love. 

A  scion  of  one  of  the  oldest  and  wealthiest 
families  of  Virginia,  whose  members  proudly 
claimed  alliance  with  the  descendants  of  George 
Washington  and  John  Randolph,  the  future 
poet  and  priest,  John  Bannister  Tabb,  was  born 
at  The  Forest,  the  family  estate  at  Mattoax, 
near  Richmond,  Va.,  on  March  22,  1845.  His 
father  was  Thomas  Yelverton  Tabb  and  his 
mother  Marianna  Bertrand  Archer,  from 
whose  union  sprang  four  children,  of  whom  our 
poet  was  the  third.  With  a  family  inheritance 
of  more  than  a  dozen  broad  and  fertile  planta 
tions,  and  surrounded  by  a  multitude  of  slaves, 
the  boy  grew  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  luxury. 
From  his  sixth  year  he  had  his  own  servants, 
one  of  whom,  at  that  age  of  toy  soldiers,  he 
liberally  offered  to  a  tin  peddler  in  exchange 
for  a  coveted  piece  of  his  shining  ware. 

Surrounded  by  all  the  gracious  home  in 
fluences,  he  used  to  boast  that  he  learned  to  read 
and  write  at  his  mother's  knee,  where  he  learned 
his  prayers.  Later,  under  the  careful  training 
of  a  private  tutor,  whose  instructions  the  neigh 
boring  children  were  allowed  to  share,  mind  and 
faculties  were  developed,  and  the  seeds  sown 
of  that  exquisite  culture  which  in  his  verses  has 
since  enchanted  the  world. 

Reared  amid  the  beautiful  mountains  of 
Virginia,  what  wonder  that  his  heart  turns  back 

[13] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

to  them  in  poesy?  "Here  nearer  heaven  I  seem 
to  be,"  he  tells  us.  A  noble  sonnet,  uThe 
Mountain,"  no  doubt  commemorates  the  moun 
tains  of  his  native  State: 

Thy  shadow  broods  above  me,  and  mine  own 
Sleeps  as  a  child  beneath  it.    O'er  my  dreams 
Thou  dost,  as  an  abiding  presence,  pour 
Thy  spirit. 

And  with  what  human  tenderness  and  pathos 
uThe  Lonely  Mountain"  tells  its  sorrow  over 
the  loss  of  one  little  bird's  voice — its  strains  of 
miraculous  power, 

A  breath  whose  faintest  echo  farthest  heard 
A  mountain  stirred. 

Can  you  not  hear  the  heart  of  the  poet 
breathing  under  it?  I  cannot  divest  myself  of 
the  thought  that  the  bird  is  symbolic — that  the 
"Mountain"  chants  a  lament  for  a  human  loss, 
for  the  "one  fond,  familiar  strain"  of  his  own 
boy  voice  pealing  out  its  happy  salute  in  song 
to  the  resounding  hills. 

At  the  age  of  fourteen,  threatened  with  fail 
ure  of  sight,  he  was  compelled  to  give  up  his 
beloved  books,  his  tutor  performing  the  office 
of  reading  to  him  daily.  This  was  the  fore 
shadowing  of  the  supreme  affliction  which  came 
upon  him  in  his  latest  years,  and  which  called 
forth  such  pathetic  effusions  from  his  artist-pen. 

[14] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

His  passionate  love  of  music,  however,  con 
soled  him  in  some  measure,  and  during  those 
three  years  of  privation  he  devoted  much  time 
to  practice  on  the  piano. 


[15] 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  BOY-SOLDIER  OF  THE  CONFEDERACY 

John  Tabb  was  scarce  more  than  a  boy  when 
the  Civil  War  broke  out,  and  honor  and  duty 
at  once  led  him  to  the  defense  of  the  Confed 
eracy.  Enlisting  in  the  navy,  he  served  as 
captain's  clerk  on  the  steamer  Robert  E.  Lee, 
which  ran  the  blockade  at  Wilmington,  N.  C., 
twenty-one  times.  His  first  voyage  to  England 
under  that  captain,  in  1862,  was  memorized 
later  by  the  appealing  poem, 

OFF  SAN  SALVADOR 

It  lay  to  westward — as  of  old, 
An  emerald  bar  across  the  gold 
Of  sunset — whence  a  vision  grand 
First  beckoned  to  the  stranger-land. 

And  on  our  deck,  uncoffined,  lay 
A  child,  whose  spirit  far  away 
The  wafture  of  an  angel  hand 
Late  welcomed  to  a  stranger-land. 

Subsequently  he  accompanied  Colonel  Stone 
to  England  as  secretary.  On  board  was  a  chap 
lain  of  the  Confederacy,  Father  Bannon,  bound 
for  Rome  to  enlist  the  sympathy  of  Pius  IX. 
One  day  being  on  deck  with  his  captain,  the 
young  secretary  saw  a  gentleman  of  distin 
guished  appearance  reading.  Informed  by  his 
officer  that  the  stranger  was  a  priest,  he  ap- 

[16] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

preached  Father  Bannon  and,  with  boyish  sim 
plicity,  asked:  "Are  you  a  Catholic  priest?" 
Receiving  an  affirmative  answer,  he  paused  a 
moment  and  then  inquired:  "Was  your  father 
a  priest?"  "No,  my  boy,"  said  the  chaplain, 
smiling.  Young  Tabb,  not  yet  satisfied,  pursued 
his  family  investigation:  "Will  your  son  be  a 
priest?"  "I  think  not,"  replied  Father  Bannon 
gently.  "May  I  see  the  book  you  are  reading, 
sir?"  And  the  Father  laid  in  the  hands  of  his 
gifted  questioner  the  breviary  which  was  after 
ward,  when  the  graces  of  faith  and  vocation  had 
been  showered  upon  him,  to  become  so  inex 
pressibly  dear  to  his  heart. 

One  must  remember  the  atmosphere  of  dense 
ignorance  of  Catholicity,  surcharged  with  preju 
dice,  in  which  the  youth  had  been  reared,  to  ap 
preciate  the  awakening  of  his  mind  during  the 
voyage,  for  he  and  Father  Bannon  had  many 
an  interview  and  became  good  friends. 

Young  Tabb  continued  to  serve  in  the  navy 
until  June  4,  1864,  when  he  was  captured  on 
the  Siren — which  had  lost  her  anchor — off 
Beaufort,  N.  C.,  by  the  Federal  ship,  Key 
stone  State.  In  the  "Lyrics,"  Father  Tabb  per 
sonifies,  in  three  deep  and  tender  quatrains, 

THE  LOST  ANCHOR 

Ah,  sweet  it  was  to  feel  the  strain, 
What  time,  unseen,  the  ship  above 
Stood  steadfast  to  the  storm  that  strove 

To  rend  our  kindred  cords  atwain! 

[17] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

To  feel,  as  feel  the  roots  that  grow 
In  darkness,  when  the  stately  tree 
Resists  the  tempests,  that  in  me 

High  Hope  was  planted  far  below! 

But  now,  as  when  a  mother's  breast 
Misses  the  babe,  my  prisoned  power 
Deep-yearning,  heart-like,  hour  by  hour 

Unquiet  aches  in  cankering  rest. 

On  the  following  day  he,  with  four  others, 
was  taken  to  Old  Point  Comfort,  where  they 
were  court-martialed.  The  youth's  sense  of 
humor  did  not  forsake  him  even  in  the  face 
of  possible  death.  When  his  judges  asked  his 
place  of  residence,  he  replied:  "England, 
France,  Scotland,  Bermuda  and  Canada,"  for 
he  had  visited  all  during  his  term  of  service. 
The  captives  were  ordered  to  the  prison  at  Point 
Lookout,  known  as  the  Bull  Pen.  Tabb,  with 
characteristic  generosity,  shared  fifty  dollars  he 
had  equally  with  them;  and  as  they  were  Eng 
lishmen  he  labored  for  their  release,  which  he 
obtained  after  two  months'  correspondence  with 
the  British  Ambassador  in  Washington. 


[18] 


CHAPTER  III 

PRISON  LIFE.      SIDNEY  LANIER 

The  horrors  of  his  prison  life  were  some 
what  mitigated  by  his  meeting  with  Sidney 
Lanier,  the  Southern  poet,  prose-writer  and 
critic.  Eight  dreary  months  of  captivity  united 
these  gifted  and  ardent  souls  forever,  and  each 
became  the  alter  ego  of  the  other.  Lanier's 
muse  did  not  wholly  forsake  him  in  those  dark 
hours,  though  sometimes  Sorrow  palsied  it; 
and  then  the  music  of  his  flute  brought  solace 
and  cheer  to  the  two  great-hearted  victims  of 
"The  Lost  Cause."  Father  Tabb's  second 
book  of  "Lyrics"  has  immortalized 

LANIER'S  FLUTE 

When  palsied  at  the  pool  of  Thought 

The  Poet's  words  were  found, 
Thy  voice  the  healing  Angel  brought 

To  touch  them  into  sound. 

Those  months  of  youth  spent  in  durance  vile, 
during  which  he  "supped  full  with  horrors," 
remained  ever  burned  upon  heart  and  memory. 
His  vivid  description  of  those  horrors  still 
haunts  the  remembrance  of  many  a  student  of 
St.  Charles  College,  with  the  faculty  of  which 
he  was  so  intimately  associated  for  more  than 
thirty  years. 

[19] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABS 

Toward  the  close  of  his  professorial  term  of 
1899-1900,  after  a  rather  brief  acquaintance 
by  letter,  I  had  the  temerity  to  suggest  that  he 
should  "go  North"  for  the  benefit  of  his  health 
and  his  literary  work.  Here  is  the  answer  that 
came  to  me  from  Mattoax,  Amelia  County,  Vir 
ginia,  on  a  hot  July  day:  "I  am  amused  at  the 
plan  you  propose.  In  the  first  place,  to  go  to 
the  'brain-cooling  North'  is  the  last  of  desires, 
for  I  am  a  Rebel  unredeemed  and  unredeem 
able,  and  should  not  feel  at  home  there.  Sec 
ondly,  had  I  the  wish,  the  means  are  lacking." 

And  in  November,  1911,  accompanying  a 
caricature  with  a  doggerel  verse  attached, 
founded  upon  a  White  House  incident  which 
had  affronted  his  Southern  blood,  there  was  the 
following  note :  "I  am  sending  you  a  letter 
from  Mrs.  Meynell  and  with  it  the  sketch  she 
refers  to.  Keep  both  if  you  choose.  Some  of 
your  girls  will,  I  know,  see  the  picture  as  does 
the  'irredeemable  Rebel'  that  drew  it.  Your 
friend,  John  B.  Tabb. — Eight  months'  confine 
ment  in  a  Northern  prison  makes  me  ever  what 
lam!" 

But  this  dark  memory  never  threw  its  shadow 
over  his  poetic  inspirations.  I  have  sought,  and 
sought  in  vain,  for  one  line  that  breathes  of 
those  troublous  years  of  the  Civil  War.  A 
marvelous  reticence,  indeed,  which  attests  that 
the  supernatural  had  swallowed  up  the  natural 
as  soon  as  he  stepped  with  his  Muse  over  the 

[20] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

border  line  of  his  divine,  Poesy.  And  his  own 
words  to  me  were:  UI  can  do  nothing  in  verse 
that  is  not  directly  imparted  to  me."  The  voice 
of  his  Muse  was  to  him  a  divine  voice. 


[21] 


CHAPTER  IV 

RELEASE    FROM    CAPTIVITY.       ENGAGES   AS 
TEACHER.      ALFRED  A.    CURTIS 

It  was  a  clear  day  in  February,  1865,  when 
at  last  John  Bannister  Tabb  and  Sidney  Lanier 
stepped  forth  freemen  again  into  God's  sun 
shine.  "I  felt  that  I  was  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  said  the  young  scion  of  aristocracy  as 
he  went  out  into  a  new  world  of  poverty  and 
wrecked  hopes,  youth's  dauntless  energies  still 
ruling  the  frail,  broken  body. 

A  means  of  self-support  must  be  found;  and 
he  turned  with  enthusiasm  to  his  favorite  art, 
music,  determined  to  devote  his  life  to  its  pur 
suit.  For  a  year  and  a  half  he  gave  seven 
hours  or  more  daily  to  piano  practice.  But  his 
patron's  fortune  suddenly  collapsed,  and  with  it 
the  young  musician's  hopes;  with  a  heavy  heart 
he  yielded  to  fate,  or  rather  to  the  mysterious 
overshadowings  of  Divine  Providence,  and  gave 
up  all  prospect  of  a  musical  career. 

A  position  as  teacher  was  now  offered  him  in 
a  school  attached  to  Mt.  Calvary  Episcopal 
Church,  Baltimore,  then  under  the  pastorate  of 
the  Rev.  Alfred  A.  Curtis,  whose  face  was  al 
ready  turned  toward  Rome.  Mt.  Calvary  was 
"High  Church,"  and  its  pastor  believed  in  the 
Blessed  Sacrament,  "said  Mass,"  preached  de- 

[22] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

votion  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary,  and  called 
himself  a  priest,  wearing  cassock  and  biretta. 
Young  Tabb  found  in  him  a  congenial  spirit; 
he  soon  fell  under  his  spiritual  influence  and 
regularly  made  his  confession  to  him  as  to  a 
trusted  guide.  And  this  influence  was  but  deep 
ened  and  strengthened  when,  a  few  years  later, 
he  obtained  a  more  important  position  at  Racine 
College,  Michigan. 

Yet  there  was  a  hidden  voice  whispering  to 
his  heart  of  higher  things  than  earth  can  give; 
and  deeming  it  a  call  to  the  ministry,  ere  long 
he  resigned  his  position  and  proceeded  to  the 
Episcopal  Seminary  at  Alexandria,  Va.,  there 
to  pursue  a  course  of  theological  study — a 
course  which  was  to  be  completed  elsewhere, 
though  he  knew  it  not,  and  after  a  long  period 
of  waiting. 

"There's  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends." 
His  revered  director,  Rev.  Mr.  Curtis,  after 
the  Conference  of  Bishops  in  Boston,  realized 
with  anguish  of  mind  that  there  was  no  longer 
any  hope  of  peace  or  salvation  for  him  in  the 
Anglican  Church.  At  the  close  of  1871,  after  a 
correspondence  with  his  Bishop,  which  forms 
one  of  the  most  interesting  and  thrilling  chap 
ters  of  his  "Biography,"  he  rent  the  ties  which 
bound  him  to  Anglicanism,  and,  resigning  his 
pastorate,  proceeded  to  Europe,  where  he  re 
paired  at  once  to  Oxford  to  consult  Dr.  New 
man. 

[23] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

His  course  was  followed  with  intense  interest 
by  his  faithful  disciple,  whose  longing  for  the 
truth  was  equally  ardent,  and  whose  admira 
tion  for  the  illustrious  English  divine, — for  the 
wisdom,  sincerity  and  holiness  of  his  life,  even 
more  than  for  his  profound  works,  already  a 
familiar  study  to  young  Tabb, — led  him  to  place 
a  trust  equally  unshaken  in  the  spiritual  counsels 
of  that  great  convert  and  guide  of  souls.  Espe 
cially  was  he  touched  with  Dr.  Newman's  first 
prescription  to  his  seeker  after  truth.  Placing 
two  books  in  Mr.  Curtis'  hands,  the  enlightened 
director  said :  "Read  these  if  you  like,  but  pray 
and  pray;  nothing  will  help  you  more  than 
humble  prayer."  His  doubts  finally  removed 
and  his  soul  fixed  in  unchangeable  peace,  the 
happy  neophyte  was  "reconciled  to  the  Church" 
by  Dr.  Newman  and  baptized  in  his  presence  on 
May  10,  1872. 


[24] 


CHAPTER  V 

ENTERS  THE  TRUE  FOLD.      STUDIES  FOR  THE 
PRIESTHOOD 

Mr.  Tabb,  profoundly  moved,  now  studied 
and  prayed  more  earnestly  than  ever;  and  when 
Mr.  Curtis,  shortly  after  his  return  from  Eu 
rope,  entered  St.  Mary's  Seminary,  Baltimore, 
to  prepare  for  the  priesthood,  there  was  only 
question  of  following  the  footsteps  of  his  guide. 
Ere  the  year  came  to  an  end  John  Bannister 
Tabb  was  enlisted  among  the  most  fervent  and 
enthusiastic  lovers  of  the  Church  of  God.  His 
intense  love  for  the  faith  in  its  purity  reminds 
one  of  Father  Faber:  he  was  a  Catholic  "from 
top  to  toe"  from  the  moment  he  entered  the 
fold,  and  to  serve  the  Church  was  the  pre 
dominating  passion  of  his  life. 

How  potently  is  the  restless  struggle  of  the 
soul — of  the  free  will  held  back  by  worldly 
ties  —  portrayed  from  experience  in  "The 
Promontory" ! 

Not  all  the  range  of  sea-born  liberty 

Hath  ever  for  one  restless  wave  sufficed: 

So  pants  the  heart — of  all  compulsion  free — 
Self-driven  to  the  Rock,  its  barrier  Christ. 

The  sway  of  the  new  seminarian  over  him 
remained  undiminished.  "On  the  day  of  Father 
Curtis'  ordination  (December  19,  1874)," — a 

[25] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

brother  Levite  tells  the  story, — uhe  heard  his 
first  confession,  the  humble,  hasteful  penitent 
being  Mr.  Tabb,  afterwards  the  noted  poet- 
priest.  Mr.  Tabb,  who  had  as  a  Protestant 
been  his  penitent,  was  now  eager  to  claim  his 
old  Confessor's  first  care.  'I  received  so  many 
absolutions  before  that  did  not  count,  I  wanted 
one  at  least  that  did,'  was  his  remark  to  the 
students." 

The  biographer  of  Bishop  Curtis  gives  a  fur 
ther  paragraph  of  interest  in  regard  to  their 
mutual  relations.  "They  had  been  the  closest 
of  friends;  and  years  after,  when  Father  Curtis 
became  Bishop  of  Wilmington,  in  1886,  he  reg 
ularly  visited  his  friend,  often  walking  the  five 
miles  from  the  railroad  station  to  St.  Charles 
College.  ,  .,  ,  Bishop  Curtis  was  his  con 
soling  angel  in  the  hour  of  his  greatest  trial  and 
darkness,  when  threatened  with  the  loss  of  sight. 
Together  they  took  long  walks  through  the 
country  recreating  each  other  and  exchanging 
reminiscences,  one  submitting  to  the  criticism 
of  his  friend  his  latest  verses,  while  the  other 
cheered  him  by  his  encouragement.  He  sent 
the  poet  kind  and  loving  messages  from  his 
deathbed,  and  bequeathed  to  him  his  chalice." 
Bishop  Curtis  died  July  11,  1908,  only  a  year 
and  four  months  before  his  friend. 

Not  long  after  Mr.  Tabb's  conversion,  his 
conviction  became  assured  that  the  priesthood 
was  his  vocation;  despite  his  own  opinion  of  his 

[26] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

unworthiness,  his  soul  was  well  prepared  for 
this  supreme  grace  by  his  purity  of  life,  his  love 
and  practice  of  prayer,  and  the  sacrifices  that 
had  been  decreed  by  the  loving  Watcher  and 
Guide  of  the  souls  of  His  elect,  at  every  step 
of  his  youthful  career.  In  1874  he  entered  St. 
Charles  College,  Ellicott  City,  Md.,  to  study 
for  the  priesthood. 


[27] 


CHAPTER  VI 

PROFESSOR   IN  ST.    CHARLES   COLLEGE.      "BONE 
RULES."      WITH  THE  MUSES 

Having  completed  his  preparatory  classical 
studies,  for  which  his  early  education  and  fine 
courses  of  reading  had  been  an  excellent  train 
ing-school,  the  aspiring  student  was  now  ready 
for  entrance  into  St.  Mary's  Seminary  to  pur 
sue  those  theological  and  Scriptural  studies 
which  were  to  bring  him  in  four  years  to  the 
goal  of  all  his  hopes.  But  just  at  this  happy 
moment  he  met  anew  the  shadowing  angel, 
Sacrifice,  which  the  Holy  Spirit  had  sent  ever 
before  him  even  from  childhood,  to  lure  him 
from  aught  but  the  Divine  Light  and  Will. 
The  faculty  of  St.  Charles,  appreciating  his  high 
intellectual  and  literary  culture  and  his  marked 
qualifications  as  a  preceptor,  persuaded  him  to 
remain  in  the  college  as  a  teacher  of  English. 
In  consequence,  his  ordination  to  the  priesthood 
was  postponed  many  years. 

He  was  a  fine  Greek  scholar  and  delighted 
in  teaching  that  language  now  and  again  to  spe 
cial  pupils.  His  admirable  memory  had  stored 
away  long  passages  of  the  classic  Greek  authors 
which  he  recited  with  rare  ease  and  force.  But 
his  affections  were  centered  on  his  English  class; 
and  he  made  the  hour  one  of  perennial  pleasure 

[28] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

as  well  as  profit  to  his  pupils.  Not  a  moment 
was  lost.  The  first  half-hour  was  devoted  to 
grammar — recitations,  explanations,  and  black 
board  work.  The  poet's  genius  for  illustration, 
which  would  have  made  him  a  pastmaster  in  that 
art,  helped  to  hold  the  attention  and  engrave  in 
the  memory  the  facts  he  strove  to  impress  upon 
his  eager  hearers. 

In  his  "Bone  Rules,  or  Skeleton  of  English 
Grammar,"  first  published  in  1897,  and  which 
he  sent  me  later,  we  discern  clearly  his  method 
of  teaching.  The  dedication  page  reads: 

INSCRIBED 
To  my  Pupils 

Active    and   Passive;    Perfect   and    Imperfect; 

Past,  Present,  and  Future,  by  Their 

Loving  Father  Tabb. 

The  brevity  and  clearness  which  mark  every 
page,  the  pithy  explanatory  notes,  the  copious 
quotations  from  the  masters  of  English  litera 
ture,  and  even  the  comic  procession  of  "Sen 
tences  to  be  corrected,"  many  of  them  Father 
Tabb's  own  creation,  render  "Bone  Rules"  an 
easy  and  a  helpful  mode  of  studying  grammar. 

But  I  have  accounted  for  only  half  of  the 
hour  consecrated  to  English.  Students  of  the 
poet  could  alone  tell  the  enchantments  "of  those 
rare  half-hours  spent  with  him  in  the  company 
of  the  Muses."  Shakespeare's  plays,  read  and 

[29] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

analyzed  with  rare  psychological  and  poetical 
insight,  awakened  unbounded  enthusiasm  in  his 
listeners.  Shelley  and  Keats,  as  well  as  Edgar 
Allen  Poe,  each  of  whom  he  cherished  with 
special  appreciation,  were  studied  and  their  ex 
quisite  imagery  and  musical  diction  brought 
strikingly  to  notice. 

Of  his  readings  of  the  prose  and  poetry  of 
that 

Sad  spirit,  swathed  in  brief  mortality 
Of  Fate  and  fervid  fantasies  the  prey, 

Mgr.  T.  S.  Duggan,  a  gifted  student  of  the  poet, 
writes :  "We  ran  with  him  through  the  full 
gamut  of  'The  Bells,'  from  their  riotous  roar 
to  the  softest  tintinnabulations.  And  even  the 
most  apathetic  was  forced  to  wipe  away  a  tear 
at  realizing  the  full  sadness  of  the  untimely 
taking  off  of  that  'rare  and  radiant  maiden 
whom  the  angels  name  Lenore.'  Toward  the 
end  of  one  session,  the  teacher  went  to  the  cor 
ner  of  the  classroom,  crouched,  and  began  to 
recite  'The  Skylark.'  The  students  were  trans 
fixed.  When  he  had  finished,  he  was  on  tiptoe 
at  the  opposite  corner  of  the  room,  breathless,  as 
if  eager  to  follow  the  bird  in  its  flight.  In 
stinctively  the  class  broke  out  in  applause.  He 
modestly  suppressed  our  enthusiasm  with  the 
remark:  'Gentlemen,  did  you  see  that  Skylark 
soar?  Did  you  hear  him  sing?  If  there  is  a 
single  boy  in  this  class  who  did  not  see  that  lark 
and  hear  him  sing,  I  forbid  him  ever  again  to 

[30] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

open  a  book  of  poetry,  for  it  would  be  a  sheer 
waste  of  time.'  Need  it  be  said  that  most  of 
those  present  saw  the  lark  and  heard  him  sing?" 
Each  of  these  three  poets  has  been  honored 
with  more  than  one  memorial  on  Father  Tabb's 
pages.  Besides  the  sonnet  entitled  "Poe,"  be 
ginning  with  the  two  lines  cited  above,  a  quat 
rain  is  inscribed  to 

POE-CHOPIN 

O'er  each  the  soul  of  Beauty  flung 
A  shadow  mingled  with  the  breath 

Of  music  that  the  Sirens  sung, 
Whose  utterance  is  death. 

In  two  rare  sonnets  he  shows  his  devotion 
to  Keats  as  well  as  in  the  double  quatrain  en 
titled  "Keats-Sappho": 

Methinks  when  first  the  Nightingale 

Was  mated  to  thy  deathless  song, 
That  Sappho  with  emotion  pale 

Amid  the  Olympian  throng, 
Again,  as  in  the  Lesbian  grove, 

Stood  listening  with  lips  apart, 
To  hear  in  thy  melodious  love 

The  pantings  of  her  heart. 

In  the  sonnet,  "At  Keats'  Grave,"  he  apostro 
phizes  the  dead  poet: 

E'en  death  itself  deals  tenderly  with  thee: 
For  here,  the  livelong  year,  the  violets  bloom 
And  swing  their  fragrant  censers  till  the  tomb 

Forgets  the  legend  of  mortality. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CHARACTERISTICS.      HIS  GIFT  OF  HUMOR 

One  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson's  biographers 
said  of  him  that  with  all  his  literary  genius  he 
would  have  been  floored  in  a  simple  sum  of 
proportion.  Father  Tabb  had  an  equal  ab 
horrence  of  mathematics;  he  even  refused  to 
admit  that  he  could  add  correctly.  His  love 
of  the  Church  and  her  doctrines  and  discipline 
was  impressed  upon  his  pupils  with  strenuous 
energy.  He  said  to  some  members  of  his  class 
one  day:  "If  I  die  before  my  ordination,  while 
studying  theology,  I  want  my  epitaph  to  read: 

'Sacred  to  the  memory  of  John  B. 
Tabb,  D.  D.'" 

The  students  smiled,  and  one  ventured  to  say: 
"But  you  are  not  a  Doctor  of  Divinity  yet." 
"D.D.  will  not  mean  Doctor  of  Divinity  when  it 
is  found  on  my  tombstone,"  was  the  answer; 
"it  will  mean  Died  of  Dogma." 

This  passion  for  the  Faith  in  its  purity 
gleams  like  a  ray  of  sunlight  through  his  poems. 
"Epiphany"  is  a  glorious  confession: 

Reason,  have  done! 
Of  thee  I'll  none 
While  face  to  face  I  see  the  sun. 

[32] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

Be  thine  the  ray 
To  point  the  way 
In  darkness:  but  behold,  'tis  day! 

Should  Faith  divine 
Forbear  to  shine, 
Again  I'll  place  my  hand  in  thine. 

For  in  thy  sight 
To  walk  aright 
Is  prelude  to  the  perfect  Light. 

Father  Tabb  had  the  faculty  of  genius  in  call 
ing  out  latent  talent  in  his  students,  which  he 
fostered  with  generous  and  unremitting  care. 
Indeed,  he  was  ever  at  their  service  in  class  or 
out  of  class,  for  he  had  the  overflowing  heart  of 
a  father  for  the  youths  in  his  charge.  His  gen 
erosity  impelled  him  often  to  little  acts  of  kind 
ness  that  boys  love — some  dainties  out  of  time, 
a  pair  of  skates  at  Christmas,  a  book  for  a 
birthday  present.  The  gifts  he  himself  received 
from  friends  were  generally  disposed  of  in  this 
way;  and  of  his  own  published  works  he  was  a 
liberal  donor. 

Yet  beloved  as  his  pupils  were,  he  would 
have  no  scenes  at  parting;  he  had  no  fancy  for 
saying  good-by.  Commencement  Day  found 
him  slipping  out  of  the  back  door  and  down 
through  the  woods  to  the  Virginia  Station  long 
before  they  and  his  numerous  friends  were  free 
to  utter  that  unpleasant  word  in  his  ear. 

It  was  characteristic  of  him,  too,  to  keep  in 
the  shade  during  celebrations  or  receptions  of 

[33] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

distinguished  visitors.  One  day  he  was  particu 
larly  requested  to  be  on  hand  to  help  entertain 
four  Bishops  who  were  hourly  expected.  The 
smile  on  his  face  could  not  be  misinterpreted. 
He  was  soon  out  of  sight  down  in  his  beloved 
haunts  in  the  woods,  where  he  spent  the  day. 
As  the  whistle  told  him  late  in  the  afternoon 
that  the  honored  guests  had  departed,  he  saun 
tered  back  to  the  college.  On  the  way  one  of 
the  faculty  met  him  and  asked:  "Why  didn't 
you  stay  and  see  the  Bishops?"  "I  didn't  want 
to  see  my  forefathers  (four  Fathers),"  was  the 
witty  rejoinder. 

In  the  same  spirit  of  distaste  for  great  func 
tions  he  declined  an  invitation  of  the  Reverend 
Father  (now  Monsignor)  Mackin,  of  Wash 
ington,  to  be  present  at  the  laying  of  the  corner 
stone  of  St.  Paul's  Church,  of  which  he  was 
pastor.  Here  are  Father  Tabb's  "Regrets"  : 

St.  Peter  is  the  cornerstone, 

And  if  you  build  on  Paul, 

I  greatly  fear 

Ere  many  a  year 
Your  Church  is  doomed  to  fall. 

So  pray  excuse 

If  I  refuse 
To  heed  your  invitation, 

Or  have  no  heart 

To  take  a  part 
In  such  a  Mackin-ation. 

He  possessed  the  gift  of  humor  in  an  ex 
traordinary  degree.  His  jokes,  repartees,  and 

[341 


CL 


K  - 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

comic  bits  of  verse  seemed  to  come  from  an  in 
exhaustible  source.  But  his  wit  was  ruled  by 
good  nature,  and  was  kindly  toward  others, 
though  often  directed  unmercifully  toward  him 
self.  He  took  delight  in  unearthing  a  tradition 
of  the  colored  mammy  who  received  him  at  his 
birth  and  who  bore  him  in  purls  naturalibits 
through  the  mansion,  that  the  entire  household 
might  see  "the  homeliest  baby  ever  born  in  Vir 
ginia."  I  have  no  doubt  that  a  profound  spirit 
of  humility  was  fostered  underneath  all  the 
ridicule  which  he  vented  upon  his  tall  spare 
form  and  prominent  features. 

On  one  occasion  I  had  expressed  my  appre 
ciation  of  his  verses  in  unmeasured  terms — 
terms  which  in  no  wise  approached  their  merit; 
and  shortly  after,  with  a  cordial  New  Year 
answer  (1903),  came  a  pencil  sketch  of  the 
poet,  to  which  he  referred  as  follows:  "To 
disabuse  your  notion  of  the  'poet,'  I  send  you 
a  matter-of-fact,  honest  presentment  of  the 

'man'  who  is  always,  dear ,  Your  servant 

in  Christ,  John  B.  Tabb."  Below  the  little 
cartoon  was  the  slanderous  verse: 

This  is  the  Catholic  priest 
Who  in  piety  never  increased. 

With  the  world  and  the  devil 

He  kept  on  a  level 
Tho'  from  flesh  he  was  wholly  released. 

I  will  venture  to  quote  a  bit  of  his  humor 
from  a  friend's  letter.  A  lady  in  Cairo,  Egypt, 

[35] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

having  written  to  Father  Tabb  for  a  copy  of 
his  poems,  he  answered  her:  "I  am  not  sur 
prised  that  you,  who  are  sojourning  in  a  land 
where  the  cat  was  once  worshiped,  should  desire 
to  hear  the  mews  (Muse)  of  the  Tabb-y." 

His  democratic  principles  are  illustrated  in 
the  Cinderella  rhymes  styled  uHigh  and  Low." 

A  boot  and  a  shoe  and  a  slipper 
Lived  once  in  the  Cobbler's  Row; 

But  the  boot  and  the  shoe 

Would  have  nothing  to  do 
With  the  slipper,  because  she  was  low. 

But  the  King  and  the  Queen  and  their  daughter 
On  the  Cobbler  chanced  to  call ; 

And  as  neither  the  boot 

Nor  the  shoe  would  suit, 
The  slipper  went  off  to  the  ball. 

Two  unconscious  lovers  he  celebrates  with 
still  more  comic  effect  in 

THE   TRYST 

Potato  was  deep  in  the  dark  underground, 

Tomato  above  in  the  light; 
The  little  Tomato  was  ruddy  and  round, 

The  little  Potato  was  white. 
And  redder  and  redder  she  rounded  above, 

And  paler  and  paler  he  grew; 
And  neither  suspected  a  mutual  love 

Till  they  met  in  a  Brunswick  stew. 

[36] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

Here  in  a  new  aspect  appears  "The  Wood 
pecker." 

The  wizard  of  the  woods  is  he, 

For  in  his  daily  round, 
Whene'er  he  finds  a  rotting  tree, 

He  makes  the  timbers  sound. 

Most  of  my  readers  will  remember  the  train 
of  events  resulting  so  disastrously  for  the 
Church  in  France  during  Premier  Combes' 
administration,  Pius  X  then  occupying  the 
Papal  throne.  The  lampoon  cited  below, 
founded  upon  this  period,  was  sent  me  by  a 
friend  in  1905 ;  I  have  never  seen  it  in  print. 

THE  ISSUE 

In  France  they  question  now:    Is  Combes' 
The  right  of  teaching  Faith,  or  Rome's? 
"That  Pius  Fraud,"  thinks  Combes,  "shall  see 
That  I  am  master  here,  not  he." 
While  thinks  the  Pope:    "Since  Peter's  day 
All  little  Cocks,  Combes,  crow  that  way." 


[37] 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THEOLOGICAL    STUDIES.      ORDINATION   TO   THE 
PRIESTHOOD 

After  so  long  and  painful  a  postponement 
of  his  ardent  aspirations  for  the  priesthood, 
Mr.  Tabb's  professorial  labors  at  St.  Charles 
were  intermitted  and  he  entered  the  Seminary. 
His  theological  studies  were  completed  toward 
the  end  of  1884.  A  spiritual  Retreat  followed, 
wholly  devoted  to  solitude  and  earnest  prepara 
tion  for  the  stupendous  dignity  to  which  he  was 
about  to  be  elevated. 

Holy  Orders  were  conferred  upon  him  dur 
ing  the  Ember  Week  of  Advent,  December  20, 
by  Archbishop  Gibbons,  in  the  Cathedral  of 
the  Assumption,  Baltimore.  It  was  in  the  Col 
lege  Chapel,  at  the  Midnight  Mass  of  Christ 
mas,  that  he  had  the  consoling  privilege  of 
offering  the  Divine  Victim  to  His  Eternal 
Father  for  the  first  time;  and  so  deeply  affected 
was  he  by  the  greatness  and  sacredness  of  the 
act  that  he  would  celebrate  only  that  one  Mass, 
although  the  Church  allows  her  priests  to  say 
three  on  the  solemn  Feast  of  the  Nativity  of 
Christ.  At  the  close  of  the  Gospel  he  turned 
and  addressed  his  audience  in  brief  but  impres 
sive  terms,  referring  with  affectionate  gratitude 
to  the  beautiful  chalice  he  had  just  used,  it  being 

[38] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

a  testimonial  of  the  love  and  appreciation  of 
his  pupils.  His  heart  overflowed  in  thanks 
giving  to  Almighty  God,  who  permitted  him  to 
celebrate  his  first  Mass  in  the  Chapel  so  dear  to 
him;  and  he  expressed  an  ardent  desire  that 
after  a  life  consecrated  to  his  beloved  pupils, 
he  might  offer  the  Holy  Sacrifice  for  the  last 
time  within  its  hallowed  walls. 

God  heard  his  prayer  and  granted  it  in  full 
ness,  for  from  that  day  until  the  day  of  his 
death  the  gifted  priest-poet  was  a  part  of  the 
college.  He  gave  to  it  the  service  of  his  whole 
being;  and  the  angels  alone  could  measure  the 
height  of  moral,  spiritual,  and  literary  influence 
which  he  exerted  not  only  on  those  who  came 
under  his  gentle  academic  sceptre,  but  on  hosts 
of  friends  and  strangers  alike  by  his  counsels, 
his  cultured  conversation,  his  kindly,  helpful 
letters — each  a  veritable  multum  in  parvo — and 
by  his  published  poems. 

He  added  fame  and  distinction  to  the  already 
famous  institution  founded  by  Charles  Carroll 
of  Carrollton  for  "the  education  of  pious  young 
men  of  the  Catholic  persuasion  for  the  ministry 
of  the  Gospel,"  as  its  ancient  Maryland  charter 
states.  His  "Poems"  and  "Lyrics"  were  read 
and  appreciated  by  an  ever-widening  circle  of 
cultured  admirers  wherever  the  English  lan 
guage  is  spoken. 

The  assertion  has  been  ventured  that  his 
diamonds  of  verse  were  more  prized  in  England 

[39] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

than  in  the  country  that  gave  them  birth;  but 
for  my  part  I  would  not  so  wrong  the  American 
mind  as  to  believe  it.  Yet  now  that  the  hand 
which  wrought  such  unique  gems  is  stilled  in 
death — and  not  one  other  to  hold  out  such  a 
casket  for  centuries,  perhaps — let  us  not  leave 
these  priceless  treasures  to  lie  on  dusty  shelves. 
Let  us  love  and  study  them  and  lead  others  to 
penetrate  their  beauty;  let  us  hold  them  in  rev 
erence  for  their  spiritual  and  educative  power. 
For,  indeed,  all  the  truth  that  Father  Tabb 
teaches  does  not  lie  open  on  the  surface :  often 
beneath  his  inspired  words  are  little  crypts  of 
thought-symbol  into  which  we  must  descend  with 
our  torches  of  love  and  intelligence  if  we  would 
pierce  the  depth  of  the  wisdom  and  beauty 
hidden  there. 


[40] 


CHAPTER  IX 

FATHER  TABB'S  POEMS  CENTER  IN  GOD 

Father  Tabb's  sacred  poems  are  gems  of  the 
sanctuary.  They  are  peculiarly  the  treasures 
of  the  Church ;  they  are  stately  with  her  majestic 
dogmas;  tender  and  pathetic  with  her  mysteries 
of  love  and  joy  and  sorrow;  glowing  with  her 
beautiful  ritual  and  the  splendor  of  her  Feasts: 
her  moral  code,  the  repentance  of  the  sinner, 
the  mystical  union  of  the  soul  with  God,  and, 
above  all,  the  divine  lessons  of  the  Master 
drawn  from  parable  and  miracle  and  doctrine, 
minister  in  turn  light  and  comfort  to  our  hearts, 
and  exquisite  pleasure  to  our  minds  under  these 
brief  poetic  creations,  "imparted,"  no  doubt, 
many  of  them,  in  the  very  presence  of  the 
Master. 

Indeed,  there  is  scarcely  a  poem  which  has 
not  for  us  this  embassy  of  sweetness,  of  uplift, 
of  comfort;  even  the  playful  fancies  in  lighter 
vein  bring  a  smile  to  the  lips,  but  a  deeper  smile 
to  the  heart.  And  often,  as  we  read,  love  and 
memory  embalm  the  lines  almost  without  effort, 
so  enchanting  is  their  melody,  so  sweet  the 
awakened  emotions  of  surprise,  and  so  insistent 
the  lesson  that  pierces  down  to  the  deeps  of  our 
nature.  How  many  thousands,  I  wonder,  can 
today  repeat,  and  each  time  with  increasing 

[41] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

pleasure,  if  not  with  fuller  comprehension,  the 
little  Christmas  verse  steeped  in  the  fragrance 
of  Heaven, 

OUT  OF  BOUNDS 

A  little  Boy  of  heavenly  birth, 

But  far  from  home  today, 
Comes  down  to  find  His  ball,  the  Earth, 

That  Sin  has  cast  away. 
O  comrades,  let  us  one  and  all 
Join  in  to  get  Him  back  His  ball ! 

It  is  a  sermon,  or,  rather,  many  mission  ser 
mons  abridged  in  a  wonderful  picture.  The 
"little  Boy" — the  Word  eternally  born  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Father;  the  Earth,  the  ball  that 
He  holds  in  the  hollow  of  His  little  hand;  the 
monster  Sin  that  has  cast  it  away,  with  the 
whole  human  race,  so  dear  to  His  heart !  And 
the  closing  soul-cry  to  us  all  to  become  apostles 
inflamed  with  boundless  zeal  to  save  the  souls 
He  has  come  so  "far  from  home"  to  redeem! 
But  who  could  translate  into  words  the  deep 
and  sublime  conceptions  this  little  verse  en 
genders  in  the  heart? 

Father  Tabb  puts  a  maximum  of  meaning 
into  a  minimum  of  words;  he  cherishes  struc 
tural  simplicity,  while  the  transcendent  energy 
of  his  mind  carries  you  away  with  a  kind  of 
momentum  over  gaps  of  thought  that  take  away 
your  breath,  as,  among  scores  of  others,  in  the 
last  couplet  of  "Recognition" — a  happy  title. 

[42] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

When  Christ  went  up  to  Calvary 

His  crown  upon  His  head, 
Each  tree  unto  its  fellow-tree 

In  awful  silence  said: 
"Behold  the  Gardener  is  He 
Of  Eden  and  Gethsemane!" 

And  here  is  a  triplet,  the  prayer  of  a  contem 
plative  soul.  I  avow  that  when  my  eyes  first 
lit  upon  it  my  heart  almost  stood  still  at  the 
depth  and  exaltation  of  the  thought. 

GOD 

I  see  Thee  in  the  distant  blue, 
But  in  the  violet's  dell  of  dew 
Behold,  I  breathe  and  touch  Thee,  too. 

Do  you  remember  how  St.  Gertrude,  picking 
a  flower  and  inhaling  its  fragrance,  almost  fell 
into  an  ecstasy  of  love  at  the  thought  that  her 
Lord  had  created  that  lovely  flower  "to  give 
pleasure  to  His  little  Gertrude"?  Emerson 
says  somewhere :  "Nature  is  the  incarnation  of 
a  thought.  .  .  .  Man  imprisoned,  man 
crystallized,  man  vegetative,  speaks  to  man  im 
personated."  Father  Tabb,  with  an  exquisite 
adaptation  of  the  miracle  recorded  in  St.  Mark, 
fifth  chapter,  reveals  his  conception  of  God  in 
His  creation. 

NATURE 

It  is  His  garment;  and  to  them 
That  touch  in  faith  the  utmost  hem, 
He  turning  says  again:    "I  see 
That  virtue  is  gone  out  from  me." 

[43] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

Are  not  these  three  poems  emanations  of  a 
heart  which  had  found  its  center  in  God,  whose 
attributes  are  revealed  to  him  through  the  trans 
parent  medium  of  His  glorious  works?  All  the 
"Nature  Lyrics" —  and  they  superabound  — 
chant  in  notes  of  deathless  beauty  the  truth 
enunciated  in  the  first  lines  of  "Resurrection" : 

All  that  springeth  from  the  sod 
Tendeth  upwards  unto  God. 

May  I  say  it  with  all  reverence?  As  one 
cannot  penetrate  the  meaning,  discern  all  the 
beauty,  and  draw  all  the  sweetness  and  divine 
unction  from  a  verse  of  Scripture  without  re 
reading,  without  tasting  each  word  in  the  silent 
pauses  of  the  soul,  so,  to  my  mind,  much  of 
Father  Tabb's  poetry  will  yield  up  its  full  har 
vest  of  inner  meaning  and  outer  loveliness  only 
to  the  student  who  dedicates  himself  lovingly 
and  leisurely  to  the  enchantment  of  his  verse. 

To  read  the  subjoined  poem  alone  is  to  feel 
the  force  of  my  suggestion. 

DEUS  ABSCONDITUS 

My  God  has  hid  Himself  from  me 
Behind  whatever  else  I  see; 
Myself — the  nearest  mystery — 
As  far  beyond  my  grasp  as  He. 

And  yet  in  darkest  night,  I  know, 
While  lives  a  doubt-discerning  glow, 
That  larger  lights  above  it  throw 
These  shadows  in  the  vale  below. 


[44] 


CHAPTER  X 


HIS  FIRST  PUBLISHED  VOLUME  OF  POEMS 

Father  Tabb's  first  modest  volume  of  poems 
was  printed  privately  in  1884;  there  is  no  ref 
erence  to  date  or  publisher  in  the  copy  I  have. 
The  lyrics,  nineteen  in  number,  are  beautiful 
and  refined,  opening  with  "The  Cloud,"  and 
closing  with  "The  Rhyme  of  the  Rock,"  the 
longest  of  all.  These  are  followed  by  "Son 
nets,"  several  of  which  are  republished  in  later 
volumes.  There  is  one  Sonnet  on  "Columbus" 
which  is  a  finely  drawn  analogy  between  St. 
Christopher 

who  on  his  shoulders  bore, 
Across  the  torrent  to  the  welcome  shore, 
The  Infant  Christ, 

and  our  Columbus,  who  was  led 

westward  o'er  the  wandering  main, 
Christ-laden,  to  the  land  whereof  no  gleam 
Had  cleft  the  compass  of  the  narrower  brain. 

Another  Sonnet  whose  fourteen  lines  con 
jure  up  in  fair  dreamland  some  of  the  great 
character-creations  of  tragic  literature,  will  not 
prove  unacceptable  in  full  to  my  readers.  To 
quote  "The  Arte  of  English  Poesie," 

[45] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

If  Poesie  be,  as  some  have  said, 
A  speaking  picture  to  the  eye, 

then  Father  Tabb  has  nobly  achieved  the 
artist's  function  and  superadded  the  grace  of  a 
third  art  by  the  musical  rhythm  of  his  num 
bers  in 

SHAKESPEARE'S  MOURNERS 

I  saw  the  grave  of  Shakespeare  in  a  dream, 
And  round  about  it  grouped  a  wondrous  throng, 
His  own  majestic  mourners,  who  belong 

Forever  to  the  Stage  of  Life,  and  seem 

The  rivals  of  reality.    Supreme 

Stood  Hamlet,  as  erewhile  the  graves  among, 
Mantled  in  thought:  and  sad  Ophelia  sung 

The  same  swan-dirge  she  chanted  in  the  stream. 

Othello,  dark  in  destiny's  eclipse, 

Laid  on  the  tomb  a  lily.     Near  him  wept 

Dejected  Constance.     Fair  Cordelia's  lips 

Moved  prayerfully  the  while  her  father  slept, 

And  each  and  all,  inspired  of  vital  breath, 

Kept  vigil  o'er  the  sacred  spoils  of  death. 

A  good  deal  to  my  surprise,  I  have  found  no 
other  tribute  to  the  Bard  of  Avon  in  Father 
Tabb's  collection  of  verse  than  an  octet,  full  of 
pathos,  which  will  fit  in  here,  although  it 
appears  in  the  book  of  "Poems"  of  1894. 

YORICK'S  SKULL 

Poor  Jester!  still  upon  the  stage, 

Chap-fallen  flung, 
Where  merry  clowns  from  age  to  age 

Thy  dirge  have  sung; 

[46] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

Yet  more  than  Eloquence  may  reach, 

Thought-heights  among: 
'Tis  thine,  humanity  to  teach, 

Sans  brains  or  tongue. 

A  beloved  name,  Cardinal  John  Henry  New 
man,  shines  on  the  Dedication  page  of  this 
volume  not  alone  in  the  formal  inscription,  but 
in  a  sonnet,  which  breathes  the  deepest  rever 
ence  and  affection.  Another  tribute  of  the  heart 
to  His  Eminence  opens  the  sequence  of  "Son 
nets"  under  date  of  May,  1879,  the  month 
in  which  the  great  Oratorian  received  the  Car 
dinal's  hat  from  the  hand  of  Pope  Leo  XIII. 

Father! — for  loftier  titles  cannot  hide 

The  tenderness  of  thy  paternity 

From  eyes  that  turn  with  filial  gaze  to  thee — 
Sons  of  thy  Faith,  across  the  ocean  wide, 
Led  of  thy  light  from  paths  unsanctified, 

Thine  own  begotten,  though  unseen  are  we. 

Thy  loss,  thy  gain,  we  count  our  own  to  be: 
And  now  our  hearts  exulting  in  the  tide 
Of  favors  shed  upon  thee  from  the  hand 

Whose  grace  outgrowrs  its  giving,  fondly  glow 
With  more  than  silent  syllables  express. 

O  westward,  as  the  sunshine,  to  our  land 
Still  let  thy  love,  a  light  perpetual,  flow, 

Thy  children  bowed  in  reverence  to  bless ! 

The  perusal  of  this  initiative  work  of  our 
great  American  Lyrist  would  by  no  means  sug 
gest  to  the  reader  a  coming  vocation  of  so  rare 
a  nature  as  the  peculiar  and  exquisite  culture  of 
the  quatrain,  and  with  such  success  as  to  exalt 

[47] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

him  to  a  special  and  unique  place  in  literature. 
Only  three  short  poems  are  to  be  found  on  its 
pages,  the  shortest  of  ten  lines.  This  book  did 
not  command  the  attention  it  deserved,  and  is 
now,  I  believe,  out  of  print. 


[48] 


CHAPTER  XI 

"POEMS."    "AN  OCTAVE  TO  MARY."    "LYRICS." 
"THE  ROSARY  IN  VERSE" 

Father  Tabb,  however,  soon  began  to  awaken 
the  public  to  the  fact  that  a  new  star  was  mount 
ing  the  poetic  horizon.  The  first  magazines 
of  this  country  and  England  published  his 
verses,  which  were  widely  copied,  and  the  critics 
were  generous  in  praise ;  so  that  when  in  Decem 
ber,  1894,  his  second  volume  "Poems,"  dedi 
cated  to  Sidney  Lanier,  appeared,  it  was 
welcomed  on  all  sides;  and  that  it  touched  a 
chord  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  was  evidenced 
by  the  fact  that  in  January,  1895,  a  second  edi 
tion  was  called  for.  A  copy  came  to  me  later 
from  a  dear  friend,  long  departed,  who  made 
in  my  favor  a  sacrifice;  for  it  had  been  the  gift 
of  the  Reverend  Charles  Ramm,  whose  exqui 
site  quatrain  on  the  flyleaf  was  a  worthy  intro 
duction  to  the  poet-priest  he  so  admired: 

The  poet's  prophet  eyes  a  form  of  beauty  see — 

A  glimpse  of  God,  a  vision  fair — 
He  chains  it  fast  in  measured  links  till  we 

Of  dimmer  sight  his  rapture  share. 

Prominent  British  critics  placed  the  author 
of  "Poems"  in  the  front  rank  of  American 
poets;  and  some  pronounced  him  one  of  the 
greatest  living  poets  in  the  English  language. 

[49] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABS 

"An  Octave  to  Mary,"  somewhat  of  an  edi 
tion  de  luxe,  in  white  or  blue  and  gold,  and 
bearing  as  frontispiece  the  Annunciation  by  E. 
Burne-Jones,  had  appeared  during  the  preced 
ing  year.  From  the  eight  filial  tributes  to  Mary, 
none  of  which  exceeds  in  length  three  sestets, 
I  select  a  bit  of  dialogue  on  the  "Purification" : 

A  PAIR  OF  TURTLE  DOVES 

Where,  Woman,  is  thine  offering — 

The  debt  of  law  and  love  ? 
"My  Babe  a  tender  nestling  is, 

And  I  the  mother-dove." 

The  book  of  "Lyrics,"  inscribed  "To  the 
Memory  of  My  Mother,"  appeared  in  1897 — 
four  editions  between  March  and  November. 
I  was  so  fortunate  as  to  receive  my  copy  directly 
from  the  author,  with  his  New  Year  greeting, 
and  on  the  flyleaf  the  octet,  "Ready." 

They  might  not  need  me 

Yet  they  might ; 
I'll  let  my  heart  be 

Just  in  sight. 
A  smile  so  small  as 

Mine  might  be 
Precisely  their 

Necessity. 

Father  Tabb  had  read  a  critical  estimate  of 
his  book  of  "Poems"  which  I  had  written  to  a 
young  relative,  and  this  was  the  grateful  out- 

[50] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

pouring  of  his  heart  for  so  slight  a  favor. 
Stranger  that  I  was  to  him,  I  was  quite  over 
powered. 

"Child  Verse"  was  issued  in  1899;  and  m 
1902  another  volume  was  given  to  an  eager 
public — "Later  Lyrics,"  dedicated  to  his  sister, 
to  whom  he  was  devotedly  attached.  The  open 
ing  poem,  haunting  in  its  music,  is  a  revelation 
of  the  poet's  longings: 

TO  A  SONGSTER 

O  little  bird,  I'd  be 
A  Poet  like  to  thee, 
Singing  my  native  song — 
Brief  to  the  ear,  but  long 
To  Love  and  Memory. 

"The  Rosary  in  Verse,"  another  tribute  of 
love  to  Mary,  is  a  chain  of  fifteen  precious 
pearls  of  verse.  The  opening  mystery,  "The 
Annunciation,"  is  told  thus: 

Accustomed  in  the  highest  heights  to  be, 

The  Angel  bowed  in  awe, 
As  if,  amazed  before  Humility, 

A  deeper  heaven  he  saw. 

And  the  final  mystery,  "The  Coronation  of 
Mary,"  is  portrayed  with  equally  striking 
brevity : 

Thee,  Mother-Queen  of  Heaven,  He  crowned, 

And  not  for  love  alone; 
For  in  thy  bosom  first  He  found 

The  life-spring  of  His  own. 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

This  little  volume  is  dedicated  "To  the 
Right  Reverend  Alfred  A.  Curtis,  D.  D.,  with 
the  love  and  veneration  of  his  first  son  in 
Christ."  It  is  an  exquisite  specimen  of  book- 
making  by  Small,  Maynard  &  Co.,  Boston, 
1904,  embellished  with  fifteen  full-page  deco 
rative  drawings  and  initial  letters  by  Thomas 
B.  Meteyard;  the  edition  was  limited  to  three 
hundred  and  fifty  copies. 


[52] 


CHAPTER  XII 

MRS.  MEYNELL'S  SELECTION  OF  VERSES.  "QUIPS 

AND  QUIDDITS."      "LATER  POEMS" 

In  1907  the  title  page  of  a  new  book  read: 
"A  Selection  from  the  Verses  of  John  B.  Tabb, 
made  by  Alice  Meynell."  This  selection,  a 
worthy  one  in  every  respect,  as  the  name  of  the 
poet  and  essayist  who  made  it  would  attest, 
gave  great  pleasure  to  Father  Tabb,  who  dedi 
cated  the  book  to  Mrs.  Meynell.  His  sight 
was  now  fast  failing,  and  my  presentation  copy 
was  followed  by  a  brief  and  touching  postal  in 
a  tremulous  hand  of  the  date  of  January  3, 

1908.  "I  send  you,  dear ,  'The  Living 

Age,'  with  a  very  kind  notice  from  the  London 
Times.  This,  with  my  greeting,  is  all  I  can  do. 
Gratefully  and  faithfully  yours,  John  B.  Tabb." 

Mrs.  Meynell  had  spent  some  months  on  the 
California  coast  with  friends  in  1901-02,  where 
she  corresponded  with  Father  Tabb,  who  some 
times  sent  me  her  letters  to  read.  He  remarks  to 
me  in  a  letter  dated  October,  1901 :  "She  is 
perhaps  the  best  Catholic  English  writer,  and 
Ruskin,  whose  life  she  wrote,  calls  her  a  great 
critic.  Her  lecture,  I  am  sure,  is  a  great  literary 
treat.  .  .  .  Hoping  you  may  see  her  if 
she  comes  to  Washington,  or,  still  better,  hear 
her,  I  am,  Your  friend  in  Christ,  John  B.  Tabb." 

[53] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

He  had  made  extraordinary  efforts  to  procure 
for  the  famous  poet  and  essayist  a  sufficient 
number  of  engagements  to  justify  a  trip  to  the 
East,  and  I,  too,  with  friends,  had  entered  with 
zest  into  the  enterprise.  To  his  great  regret, 
it  failed. 

Apart  from  Mrs.  Meynell's  fame  as  a  writer, 
Francis  Thompson  had  portrayed  her  in  lines 
of  such  Dantean  beauty  in  "Love  in  Dian's 
Lap"  that  it  seemed  to  her  friends  she  should 
have  been  the  observed  of  all  observers  in  our 
country.  Personally,  my  admiration  for  her  as 
a  writer  is  extraordinary,  but  my  affections  have 
long  been  hers — apart,  unknown — for  the  un 
speakable  kindnesses  which  she,  in  conjunction 
with  her  husband,  showered  upon  the  neglected 
poet:  she  deserved,  indeed,  to  be  raised  to  im 
mortality  by  his  pen,  which  honored  her  equally 
in  her  children  in  "Sister  Songs"  and  other 
poems. 

In  April,  1912,  Father  Tabb  writes:  "I  am 
sending  herewith  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Meynell, 
and  the  verses  of  mine  which  she  kindly  ap 
proves.  Accept  them  with  the  Easter  greetings 
of  Your  friend  in  Christ,  John  B.  Tabb." 
These  three  exquisite  six-lined  stanzas  bore  the 
title,  "To  Her  First-Born."  A  postscript 
added:  "Nothing  from  Mrs.  Meynell  since  I 
wrote  you  last.  On  the  I2th,  I  think,  she  sails." 

In  the  same  year,  1907,  "Quips  and  Quid- 
dits,"  an  illustrated  book  of  humorous  verse, 

[541 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

came  from  the  press.  The  edition  of  "Selec 
tions"  just  mentioned  had  been  bound  in  a  color 
which  seems  to  have  appealed  to  Father  Tabb's 
sense  of  humor,  and  one  of  these  "Quips"  reads 
as  follows: 

ON  THE  COVER  OF  JOHN  B.  TABB'S 
LATE  LONDON  VOLUME 

His  eyes  are  dim: 

And  so  for  him, 

They  thought  in  London,  'twas  enough 
To  bind  his  book  in  blind-man's  buff. 

The  illustrations,  which  add  to  the  humor  of 
the  volume,  were  designed,  I  conjecture,  by  the 
author's  own  pen.  A  doubtful  point  in  his 
torical  records  he  amusingly  discusses  in 

QUEEN  BESS 

Or  praise  or  obloquy  is  hers 
As  history  has  viewed  her; 

To  some  a  I  der  she  appears, 
To  others  but  a  2  dor. 

The  poet  plays  with  the  instruments  of  his 
art  in 

UNSTATIONARY  STATIONERY 

The  Wax  waxed  hotter  and  hotter 

Till  the  Seal  took  his  seat  on  her  back  ; 

And  the  Pen  wiped  his  foot  on  the  Blotter, 
And  laughed  at  them  both  from  the  Rack. 

Here  is  the  penalty  inflicted  for  a  slip  in 
orthography. 

[SSl 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

TO  MR.  ANDREW  LANG,  WHO  SPELLED  MY  NAME 
"TAB" 

O  why  should  Old  Lang  Sign 

A  compliment  to  me 
(If  it  indeed  is  mine) 

And  filch  my  final  b? 
To  him  as  to  the  Dane 

In  his  soliloquy, 
This  question  comes  again, — 

"2  b  or  not  2  b?" 

"Later  Poems"  came  to  the  world  as  a  dying 
gift  from  the  poet,  dedicated 

"To  M.  A.  C. 

to  whom 
My  Right   Reverend   Father  in   Christ 

the  late 

Bishop  Alfred  A.   Curtis,   D.   D., 
commended  his  son." 

It  was  a  collection  of  poems  that  had  hon 
ored  the  columns  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
Harper's  Magazine  and  others  during  his  later 
years.  His  blindness  prevented  his  preparation 
of  the  volume  for  the  press.  A  letter  dated 
March  2,  1909,  and  dictated  to  another  hand, 

refers  to  the  forthcoming  poems :    "Dear : 

Thank  you  for  your  letter,  but  not  for  the  pre 
mature  embalming  of  your  friend;  after  I  am 
dead,  folks  may  say  what  they  please,  but  my 
poor  living  body  does  not  fancy  perfume.  .  .  . 
Mrs.  Meynell  is  preparing  my  last  volume  for 
publication,  a  copy  of  which  you  shall  have 

[56] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

when  it  appears.  As  to  the  sketch  of  my  life, 
I'm  fighting  hard  to  baffle  the  project.  .  .  . 
Please  accept  my  best  blessing  and  give  me  your 
prayers.  Ever  yours  faithfully,  John  B.  Tabb." 
The  beloved  author  did  not  live  to  see  his 
"Later  Poems"  in  print.  He  was  summoned 
to  his  heavenly  reward  in  November  of  the 
same  year,  and  the  volume  came  from  the  press 
(Kennedy,  New  York)  only  in  1910.  Its  hun 
dred  and  more  poems  seemed  to  those  who 
loved  him  and  treasured  his  least  words  a  little 
shower  of  pearls  dropped  on  his  way  to  Heaven. 
Deeply  pathetic  and  touching  are  the  poems — a 
decade  of  them — on  his  blindness,  which  breathe 
to  us  his  last  message  of  resignation  and  hope 
and  love  as  he  sought  more  than  ever  the  eternal 
light  that  shines  in  the  soul  from  the  unseen 
world. 


[57] 


CHAPTER  XIII 

ESTIMATE  OF  HIS  POEMS.    HIS  OPTIMISTIC  SPIRIT 

A  tragic  writer,  Alcestides,  boasted  that 
whereas  Euripides  had  composed  only  three 
verses  in  three  days,  he  himself  had  written 
three  hundred.  "Thou  sayest  the  truth,"  an 
swered  the  dramatist,  "but  thine  shall  be  read 
only  three  days,  while  mine  shall  last  for  three 
ages."  To  my  mind,  the  same  scale  of  propor 
tion  may  be  used  in  comparing  the  ephemeral 
fame  of  a  score  of  prolix  poets  of  our  own  day 
with  Father  Tabb's  enshrinement  in  the  hearts 
of  a  long-abiding  posterity.  A  lover  and  ap 
prenticed  student  of  the  Elizabethan  writers, 
pre-eminently  of  the  Shakespearean  drama, 
which  he  taught  with  unparalleled  enthusiasm, 
Father  Tabb's  poetic  phrase  is  woven  with  the 
exquisite  skill  and  variety  of  the  genius  of  that 
age,  whether  he  rises  to  the  elevated  truths  that 
so  captivated  his  noble  intellect  or  expatiates  in 
the  most  delicate  regions  of  fancy.  The  rhythm 
is  that  of  the  musician  whose  ear  is  attuned  to 
the  perfection  of  melody.  His  language  is  in 
deed  music;  the  overflow  of  vowels  and  soft 
consonants,  the  artistic  freedom  of  accent,  and 
the  subtle  interplay  of  different  metres  give  a 
fascination  to  the  poet's  verse-making  only  in 
ferior  to  the  spell  cast  upon  us  by  his  thought 
and  imagery. 

[58] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

Unlike  Francis  Thompson,  he  did  not  seek 
in  the  Elizabethan  treasury  words,  however 
beautiful,  that  had  the  stamp  of  antiquity;  nor 
did  he  ever  coin  new  words  for  his  purpose, — 
and  he  might  have  done  so  and  added  a  golden 
score  to  the  modern  poet's  vocabulary,  so  prodi 
gious  was  his  inventive  power  and  so  sane  the 
judgment  and  taste  that  ruled  it.  The  truth  is, 
Father  Tabb  loved  simplicity — he  sang  first 
for  God,  and  then  for  every  soul  that  wished  to 
hear,  from  the  princes  of  the  realms  of  intellect 
and  fancy  to  the  simple  and  unlearned,  yea,  to 
the  child. 

The  poet  loves  solitary  places: 

to  his  capable  ears 
Silence  is  music  from  the  holy  spheres : — 

and  the  charm  and  divine  contentment  that 
Father  Tabb  found  in  "loneliness"  he  reveals  to 
us  in  the  lyric 

IN  SOLITUDE 

Like  as  a  brook  that  all  night  long 
Sings,  as  at  noon,  a  bubble-song 

To  Sleep's  unheeding  ear, 
The  Poet  to  himself  must  sing, 
When  none  but  God  is  listening 

The  lullaby  to  hear. 

In  passing  I  would  ask  you  to  observe  the 
perfect  music  of  the  versification,  the  tender 
voweling,  the  soft  unobtrusive  flow  of  the  con- 

[59] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

sonants,  the  variable  fall  of  the  accent;  in  a  few 
lines  of  iambic  tetrameter  and  trimeter,  we  hear 
as  well  the  pleasing  ring  of  trochee,  dactyl,  am 
phibrach  and  spondee;  and  this  ease  and  mas 
tery  of  change  betray  everywhere  the  "maker 
and  model  of  melodious  verse." 

Father  Tabb  was  a  lover  of  silence,  too, — 
the  silence  of  the  soul:  and  his  poems  on  this 
theme  are  notable  and  suggestive.  Here  he 
questions 

SILENCE 

Why  the  warning  finger-tip 
Pressed  forever  on  thy  lip? 
"To  remind  the  pilgrim  Sound 
That  it  treads  on  holy  ground, 
In  a  breathing  space  to  be 
Hushed  for  all  eternity." 

This  lyric  of  six  lines  touches  the  sublime  as 
well  in  its  Scriptural  allusion  as  in  its  great  final 
thought.  It  recalls  a  brief  lyric  of  John  Boyle 
O'Reilly,  which  begins: 

The  Infinite  ever  is  silent, 
Only  the  finite  speaks. 

A  masterly  critic  in  the  London  "Times," 
quoted  by  "Littell's  Living  Age,"  remarks  of 
the  poem  "To  Silence" :  "Grandeur  cannot  be 
achieved  in  six  lines  by  grandiloquence.  In  the 
immensity  of  what  it  suggests,  the  vast  silence 
out  of  which  it  wakes  and  into  which  it  fades, 
that  poem  is  undeniably  grand." 

[60] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

A  cheerful  and  optimistic  spirit  shines  through 
all  Father  Tabb's  verses;  not  a  trace  of  melan 
choly  is  to  be  found  among  them;  his  themes 
are  sometimes  sad,  but  soft  and  beautiful  lights 
of  hope,  resignation,  and  kindred  emotions 
make  the  sadness  sweet;  and  you  are  led  into 
visions  of  loveliness  by  the  hand  of  Sorrow 
herself.  I  do  not  know  a  poem  which  illustrates 
better  what  I  have  said  than  that  tender  lyric 
"Confided,"  which  is  found  in  every  American 
anthology.  It  is  the  plaint  of  a  mother  who  has 
just  laid  her  little  babe  in  God's  Acre. 

Another  lamb,  O  Lamb  of  God,  behold, 

Within  this  quiet  fold, 

Among  Thy  Father's  sheep 

I  lay  to  sleep! 

A  heart  that  never  for  a  night  did  rest 

Beyond  its  mother's  breast. 

Lord,  keep  it  close  to  Thee, 

Lest  waking  it  should  bleat  and  pine  for  me ! 

His  cheerfulness  has  a  special  winning  power: 
it  has  held  a  charm  for  me  since  the  day  I 
opened  the  first  book  of  "Poems."  How  softly 
he  smiles  sorrow  away  in  the  "Fern  Song" ! 

Dance  to  the  beat  of  the  rain,  little  Fern, 
And  spread  out  your  palms  again, 

And  say,  "Tho'  the  sun 

Hath  my  vesture  spun, 
He  had  labored,  alas,  in  vain, 

But  for  the  shade 

That  the  Cloud  hath  made, 

[61] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

And  the  gift  of  the  Dew  and  the  Rain." 

Then  laugh  and  upturn 

All  your  fronds,  little  Fern, 
And  rejoice  in  the  beat  of  the  rain! 

No  melancholy  there!  He  would  have  us 
laugh  and  welcome  the  little  trials  that  befall 
us — the  Cloud  and  the  Dew  and  the  Rain,  that 
come  even  into  the  sunny  lives  of  youth,  because 
they  strengthen  us  and  make  us  grow  spiritually 
and  intellectually.  Here  is  what  his  happy 
nature  thinks  of 

LAUGHTER 

"Et  ridebit  in  die  novissimo" 
When  wrought  of  Joy  and  Innocence 

'Tis  unto  God  it  goes, 
A  fragrance  of  the  olive  whence 
His  "oil  of  gladness"  flows. 

In  a  letter  dated  February,  1902,  he  writes: 
"As  to  the  blues,  I  am  upside  down — the  worst 
weather  putting  me  in  the  best  spirits.  'The 
Smart  Set'  has  taken  the  following  quatrain : 

BY   CONTRARIES 

'Tis  strange,  but  ominously  true, 
When  we  are  bright  the  skies  are  blue ; 
But,  let  them  change  their  livery, 
And  in  a  moment  blue  are  we. 

This,  of  course,  only  true  of  well-constructed 
people — not  cranks,  such  as  I." 


[62] 


CHAPTER  XIV 

HIS  LOVE  OF  NATURE.      FLOWER  POEMS 

Father  Tabb  had  the  poet's  passionate  love 
of  nature,  but  sublimated;  his  sense  of  beauty 
was  a  part  of  his  religion;  and  to  such  a  spirit 
every  object  of  creation  becomes  a  ladder  of 
light  by  which  it  mounts  to  the  Maker  of  all 
things.  Browning  says: 

God  is  the  Perfect  Poet, 
Who  in  creation  acts  His  own  conceptions; 

and  to  His  hand  Father  Tabb  clung  like  a  little 
child,  watching  Him  breathlessly,  joyously, 
in  the  minutest  details  of  creation — of  life, 
motion,  color,  as  expressed  in  the  flower,  the 
bird,  the  insect,  in  the  elements,  in  the  starry 
universe,  in  the  complex  workings  of  the  Divine 
Spirit  in  the  temple  of  human  personality. 

From  the  sacred  Presence  of  the  Tabernacle, 
where,  like  his  saintly  model,  Bishop  Curtis,  he 
spent  hours  of  fervent  adoration,  he  would 
pass  to  his  sanctuary  of  the  woods,  and  there 
wait,  assured  of  poetic  inspiration.  For  there 
he  swung  anew  the  worship-cloud  of  incense  in 
the  golden  censer  of  exquisite  verse  to  the  ever- 
present  Creator. 

Indeed,  who  can  surpass  his  own  conception 
of  the  divine  art  he  so  loved  and  honored? 
Read  it: 

[63] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABS 

POETRY 
A  gleam  of  Heaven;  the  passion  of  a  star 

Held  captive  in  the  clasp  of  harmony; 
A  silence,  shell-like  breathing  from  afar 

The  rapture  of  the  deep — eternity. 

The  soul  that  has  found  its  mystical  union 
with  the  Maker  is  there,  so  it  seems  to  me. 

I  have  wondered  if  the  poet  saw  the  acorns 
fall  as  he  sat  that  day  in  the  woods  with  pen 
in  hand  and  mused:  we  are  the  richer  for  his 
musings  in 

COMPENSATION 
How  many  an  acorn  falls  to  die 

For  one  that  makes  a  tree! 
How  many  a  heart  must  pass  me  by 

For  one  that  cleaves  to  me! 

How  many  a  suppliant  wave  of  sound 

Must  still  unheeded  roll, 
For  one  low  utterance  that  found 

An  echo  in  my  soul ! 

How  numerous  and  how  varied  in  beauty  and 
the  suggested  moral  lesson  are  the  flower 
poems !  In  one  of  his  roamings  through  the 
woods  he  brought  home  to  the  college  a  flower, 
and  to  that  we  owe 

MY  CAPTIVE 
I  brought  a  blossom  home  with  me 

Beneath  my  roof  to  stay; 
But  timorous  and  frail  was  she 

And  died  before  the  day: 
She  missed  the  measureless  expanse 
Of  heaven,  and  heaven  her  countenance. 

[641 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

There  is  a  sublimity  of  suggestion  in  the  last 
two  lines  that  often  startles  us  in  Father  Tabb's 
singing,  a  hint  of  divine  analogies  that  must 
give  us  pause. 

"Wood  Grain"  is  an  exquisite  lyric  in  dactylic 
metre:  a  bit  of  graphic  picture-work  intended, 
no  doubt,  to  symbolize  the  hidden  workings  of 
God's  grace  in  lives. 

This  is  the  way  that  the  sap-river  ran 
From  the  root  to  the  top  of  the  tree — 
Silent  and  dark, 
Under  the  bark, 
Working  a  wonderful  plan 
That  the  leaves  never  know, 
And  the  branches  that  grow 
On  the  brink  of  the  tide  never  see. 

Here  is  a  little  pearl  of  delicate  sweetness 
and  daintiness : 

A  SLEEPING-PLACE 

When  into  the  Rose 

A  ladybird  goes 
And  o'er  her  couch  the  petals  close, 

Was  ever  bed 

So  canopied 
For  lids  in  maiden  slumber  wed? 

Now  in  soft  trochaics  and  glowing  rhetoric 
he  is  chatting  familiarly  with  "The  Yellow 
Crocus." 

Were  you,  little  Monarch,  crowned 

Under  ground? 
Or  did  the  Daylight  make  you  king 

Of  the  Spring? 

[65] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

Ere  your  blossom-retinue 

Come  to  you, 
I,  before  your  Majesty, 

Bow  the  knee. 

Did  you  ever  feel  like  this  when  you  saw  the 
first  Crocus?  I  feel  so  every  March. 

And  can  you  find  a  more  fascinating  little 
bit  of  drama  than  the  poet  presents  in 

THE  TAX-GATHERER 

"And  pray,  who  are  you?" 
Said  the  Violet  blue 
To  the  Bee,  with  surprise 
At  his  wonderful  size, 
In  her  eye-glass  of  dew. 

"I,  madam,"  quoth  he, 
"Am  a  publican  Bee, 
Collecting  the  tax 
On  honey  and  wax. 
Have  you  nothing  for  me?" 

The  Violet  claims  many  tender  tributes — 
"To  a  Wood  Violet,"  "Brotherhood,"  "The 
Violet  Speaks,"  "One  April  Morn,"  and  others. 


[66] 


CHAPTER  XV 

FLORAL  LYRICS CONTINUED 

Spring  never  came  forth  under  the  veil  of 
Allegory  in  more  exquisite  and  touching  beauty 
than  she  appears  to  us  in 

THE  TRYST  OF  SPRING 

Stern  Winter  sought  the  hand  of  Spring, 
And,  tempered  to  her  milder  mood, 
Died  leafless  on  the  budding  breast 
He  fondly  wooed. 

She  wept  for  him  her  April  tears, 
But,  from  the  shadows  wandering  soon, 
Dreamed  of  a  \varmer  love  to  come 
With  lordly  June. 

He  scatters  roses  at  her  feet, 
And  sunshine  o'er  her  queenly  brow, 
And  through  the  listening  silence  breathes 
A  bridal  vow. 

She  answers  not;  but,  like  a  mist 
O'erbrimmed  and  tremulous  with  light, 
In  sudden  tears  she  vanishes 
Before  his  sight. 

Does  not  the  last  stanza  appeal  to  you  with 
a  poignant  human  touch? 

Two  far  apart — beauty  in  sublimity  and 
beauty  in  littleness — are  made  lovable  person- 

[67] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

alities  in  Dawn  and  the  Blossom,  and  brought 
into  dramatic  contact  in  "Come  True."  Amid 
the  train  of  conceptions  that  their  tender  col 
loquy  evokes,  the  final  one  is  dominant — the 
sweetly  living  and  ever-ruling  thought  of  Father 
Tabb — of  the  transitoriness  of  all  earthly 
glories,  the  passing  away  of  mortal  hopes  and 
loves. 

"Good  morrow!"  breathed  the  Blossom. 

"Good  morrow!"  flushed  the  Dawn. 
"Where  were  you,  dear,  before  the  light? 
For  I  was  dreaming  all  the  night 

That  we  should  meet  anon, 
To  drink  a  dewdrop  here  today, 
And  then  together  pass  away." 

The  apostrophe  "To  a  Rose,"  beginning 

Thou  hast  not  toiled,  sweet  Rose, 
Yet  needest  rest, 

summons  up  its  counterpart,  Herrick's  lovely 
"Daffodils,"  so  persistent  a  favorite  of  mine, 
that  it  has  been  painted  on  Memory's  canvas  by 
each  succeeding  band  of  pupils.  I  deem  that  both 
poets  stood  in  contemplation  before  the  flowers 
of  their  love,  when  of  a  sudden  each  calyx  be 
came  a  well-spring  of  inspiration;  and  they 
turned  from  the  spot  in  a  brief  space  their 
dream  of  beauty  and  tears — of  "Life's  mys 
tery" — transferred  to  their  tablets  for  an  en 
tranced  posterity. 

[68] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

It  is  hard  to  restrain  the  temptation  to  cull 
more  of  the  poet's  dainty  Flora,  for  it  is  a  royal 
garden  in  which  Father  Tabb's  Muse  disports, 
and  she  has  a  loving  glance  and  a  lyric  for  all 
these  rainbow  children  of  the  sun,  yea,  even  for 
the  "Wild  Flowers"  that  strew  the  woods  be 
yond  her  crystal  gate.  The  common  "Clover" 
of  our  fields,  mounting  Nature's  pulpit,  becomes 
the  poet's  teacher.  Brimming  with  simplicity 
and  reverence,  a  revelation  of  beauty,  and 
breathing  subtle  intimations  of  the  Trinity  and 
Unity  of  God,  the  most  majestic  dogma  of  our 
faith,  this  poem  recalls  St.  Patrick  standing  be 
fore  the  King  of  Tara  and  conveying  to  him 
through  the  little  three-leaved  shamrock  the 
mysterious  lesson  of  Christianity. 

CLOVER 

Little  Masters,  hat  in  hand, 
Let  me  in  your  presence  stand, 
Till  your  silence  solve  for  me 
This  your  threefold  mystery. 

Tell  me — for  I  long  to  know — 
How,  in  darkness  there  below, 
Was  your  fairy  fabric  spun, 
Spread  and  fashioned,  three  in  one. 

Did  your  gossips,  gold  and  blue, 
Sky  and  Sunshine,  choose  for  you, 
Ere  your  triple  forms  were  seen, 
Suited  liveries  of  green  ? 

[69] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABS 

Can  ye — if  ye  dwelt  indeed 
Captives  of  a  prison  seed — 
Like  the  Genie,  once  again 
Get  you  back  into  the  grain  ? 

Little  Masters,  may  I  stand 
In  your  presence,  hat  in  hand, 
Waiting  till  you  solve  for  me 
This  your  threefold  mystery? 


CHAPTER  XVI 

BIRD    LYRICS 

In  a  group  of  enchanting  bird  lyrics — more 
than  thirty  of  them — the  little  minstrels  of  the 
air  most  dear  to  us  are  all  immortalized.  Now 
Father  Tabb  is  watching  a  pair  of  birds  build 
ing  a  nest — a  most  fascinating  bit  of  architec 
ture,  of  which  act  I  think  I  am  an  unimpeach 
able  witness,  having  been  chief  assistant  to  the 
thrush  and  wren  on  many  occasions.  He 
daintily  pictures  the  planning  of  the  airy  struc 
ture,  the  laying  of  the  eggs,  the  hatching  of  the 
fledgelings,  and  the  flight.  Now  it  is  a  lark  high 
in  the  air,  athrob  with  life  and  song — anon  it  is 
a  dead  thrush  that  awakens  his  sympathy.  The 
bluebird,  the  robin,  the  lovely  killdee,  whose  note 
is  "a  rhapsody  of  light,"  —  and  how  many 
more ! — all  chant  their  madrigals  for  him  and  he 
in  turn  sings  their  praises  in  dewy  poesy.  There 
he  is  bending  over  a  "Humming-Bird"  which  his 
poet-brush  paints  for  us  in  this  fashion: 

A  flash  of  harmless  lightning, 

A  mist  of  rainbow  dyes, 
The  burnished  sunbeams  brightening, 

From  flower  to  flower  he  flies: 

While  wakes  the  nodding  blossom, 

But  just  too  late  to  see 
What  lip  hath  touched  her  bosom 

And  drained  her  nectary. 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

The  mocking-bird,  I  think,  is  his  favorite, 
after  the  killdee.  UO  heart  that  cannot  sleep 
for  song!" — he  so  addresses  that  midnight 
warbler,  delirious  with  rapture,  in  one  poem; 
and  in  another,  "A  Phonograph,"  he  sums  up 
the  bird's  whole  score  of  musical  robberies  in  a 
delicious  quatrain: 

Hark!  what  his  fellow  warblers  heard 

And  uttered  in  the  light, 
Their  phonograph,  the  mocking-bird, 

Repeats  to  them  at  night. 

The  story  is  told  by  many  lyrists  how  the 
dear  robin's  breast  became  red,  but  by  none,  I 
conceive,  so  briefly  and  sweetly  as  by  Father 
Tabb.  Judge  for  yourselves : 

ROBIN  REDBREAST 

When  Christ  was  taken  from  the  rood, 

One  thorn  upon  the  ground, 
Still  moistened  with  the  Precious  Blood, 

An  early  Robin  found 
And  wove  it  crosswise  in  his  nest, 
Where,  lo,  it  reddened  all  his  breast! 

The  poet  conjures  "Two  Sparrows"  from 
their  far-away  home  in  the  Scriptural  land  to 
renew  for  us  the  Master's  lesson: 

To  creatures  upon  earth, 
Our  price  one  farthing  worth : 
To  everlasting  Love 

All  price  above. 

[72] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

And  in  the  same  vein  of  Scriptural  rever 
ence  is 

HOLY  GROUND 

Pause  where  apart  the  fallen  sparrow  lies, 

And  lightly  tread; 
For  there  the  pity  of  a  Father's  eyes 

Enshrines  the  dead. 

Of  this  quatrain  a  London  critic  says  with 
truth:  "In  that  thought  lies  the  secret  of  the 
unity  for  which  Father  Tabb  seeks  in  living  and 
dead,  man  and  flower,  great  and  small." 

'The  Dead  Thrush"  is  all  melody.  A  bird- 
lover  cannot  see  the  beautiful  speckle-breast 
that  charmed  so  many  summer  hours  lying 
stark  without  a  pang  akin  to  that  for  human 
loss :  I  know  one,  at  least,  who  has  suffered  this 
pang  many  times.  But  Father  Tabb's  elegy  is 
full  of  hope.  Here  is  his  first  stanza : 

Love  of  nest  and  mate  and  young 
Woke  the  music  of  his  tongue, 
While  upon  the  fledgeling's  brain 
Soft  it  fell  as  scattered  grain, 
There  to  blossom  tone  for  tone 
Into  echoes  of  his  own. 

I  cannot  part  with  these  lovely  warblers  of 
the  "sylvan  solitudes"  without  listening  awhile 
with  the  poet  to  the  strains  of 

[73] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

THE  WOOD  ROBIN 

The  wooing  air  is  jubilant  with  song; 

And   blossoms  swell 
As  leaps  thy  liquid  melody  along 

The  dusky  dell, 
Where  Silence,  late  supreme,  foregoes  her  wonted  spell. 


Teach  me,  thou  warbling  eremite,  to  sing 

Thy  rhapsody; 
Nor  borne  on  vain  ambition's  vaunting  wing, 

But  led  of  thee, 
To  rise  from  earthly  dreams  to  hymn  eternity. 


[74] 


CHAPTER  XVII 

BABYHOOD  AND  YOUTH  IN  POESY 

Love  was  the  principle  of  Father  Tabb's 
life — primarily  intense  love  of  God,  and  then 
its  natural  outcome,  love  of  the  neighbor — that 
ardent  love  of  souls  that  distinguishes  the  priest, 
yes,  but  moreover  a  cordial,  tender,  expansive, 
Christlike  love  which  finds  its  object  in  the  little 
babe  on  its  mother's  breast,  in  the  gentle,  pure 
maiden,  in  the  rollicking  boy,  in  every  type  of 
noble  manhood  or  womanhood;  his  deep  affec 
tions  flow  out  to  the  stranger,  to  the  erring,  to 
the  wanderer,  to  call  them  back  by  a  thousand 
winning  ways.  The  last  two  stanzas  of  "Visible 
Sound"  proclaim  this  all-radiating  and  all-con 
verging  principle  of  life  and  beauty. 

Yea,  Love,  of  sweet  Nature  the  Lord, 
Hath  fashioned  each  manifold  chord 
To  utter  His  visible  Word, 

Whose  work,  wheresoever  begun, 
Like  the  rays  floating  back  to  the  Sun, 
In  the  soul  of  all  beauty  is  one. 

Francis  Thompson  wrote  to  his  infant  god 
child,  Francis  Meynell — anticipating  the  arrival 
of  this  "heir  of  his  song"  in  the  Blessed  Land 
long  after  his  own  entrance  there — "Look  for 

[75] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

me  in  the  NURSERIES  of  Heaven!"  And  judg 
ing  from  the  alluring  loveliness  with  which 
Babyhood  sits  throned  in  Father  Tabb's  poetic 
bower,  crowned  and  circled  by  the  "Rosebud" 
vines  of  his  delicate  fancy  and  tender  affection, 
I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  poet-priest  has 
found  a  part  of  his  beatitude  in  those  "divine 
nurseries."  Surely  the  "Babe  Niva"  must  have 
welcomed  him  there : 

Niva,  Child  of  Innocence, 

Dust  to  dust  we  go : 
Thou,  when  Winter  wooed  thee  hence, 

Wentest  snow  to  snow. 

And  the  Babe  whom  he  apostrophized  in 
dying,  too,  smiled  a  heavenly  greeting: 

O  Bubble,  break!   All  heaven  thou  hast 

Unsullied  in  thy  heart! 
Ere  Time  its  shadow  on  thee  cast 

Love  calls  thee  to  depart. 

But  let  us  descend  the  crystal  ladder  to  earth 
again,  and,  entering  on  tiptoe  into  a  dainty 
nursery  of  Time,  see  with  the  poet's  eyes 

BABY 

Baby  in  her  slumber  smiling, 

Doth  a  captive  take: 
Whispers  Love,  "From  dreams  beguiling 

May  she  never  wake!" 

[76] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

When  the  lids,  like  mist  retreating, 

Flee  the  azure  deep, 
Wakes  a  newborn  Joy,  repeating, 

"May  she  never  sleep!" 

And  now  behold  the  innocent  Babe  turned 
suddenly  and  bewitchingly  into 

AN  IDOLATER 
The  Baby  has  no  skies 
But  Mother's  eyes; 
Nor  any  God  above 
But  Mother's  love. 
His  Angel  sees  the  FATHER'S  face, 
But  he  the  Mother's  full  of  grace ; 
And  yet  the  Heavenly  Kingdom  is 
Of  such  as  this. 

Hush!  Listen  to  the  lovely  "Cradle-Song," 
a  tribute  to  mother-love  which,  I  doubt  not,  for 
its  exquisite  pathos  and  tender  reminiscence,  has 
drawn  tears  from  many  a  mother's  eyes: 

Sing  it,  Mother!  sing  it  low: 

Deem  it  not  an  idle  lay. 
In  the  heart  't  will  ebb  and  flow 

All  the  life-long  way. 

Sing  it,  Mother,  Love  is  strong! 

When  the  tears  of  manhood  fall, 
Echoes  of  thy  cradle-song 

Shall  its  peace  recall. 

Sing  it,  Mother !  when  his  ear 
Catcheth  first  the  Voice  Divine, 

Dying,  he  may  smile  to  hear 
What  he  deemeth  thine. 

[77] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

How  playfully  and  carefully  the  poet-uncle 
has  portrayed  "Baby's  Dimples" ! 

Love  goes  playing  hide-and-seek 
Mid  the  roses  on  her  cheek, 
With  a  little  imp  of  Laughter, 
Who,  the  while  he  follows  after, 
Leaves  the  footprints  that  we  trace 
All  about  the  Kissing-place. 

And  here,  more  attractive  in  its  dainty  pic- 
turesqueness  than  any  that  ever  came  from  a 
king's  garden,  is 

A  BUNCH  OF  ROSES 

The  rosy  mouth  and  rosy  toe 

Of  little  baby  brother, 
Until  about  a  month  ago 

Had  never  met  each  other; 
But  nowadays  the  neighbors  sweet, 

In  every  sort  of  weather, 
Half  way  with  rosy  fingers  meet, 

To  kiss  and  play  together. 

Yet  "Chanticleer," 

A  crowing,  cuddling  little  Babe  was  he, 

would  perhaps  gain  the  prize  over  them  all  for 
winning  charm  and  for  pathos — that  sudden 
pull  at  the  heartstrings  that  leaves  an  ache  long 
after. 

In  a  graphic  Allegory  of  six  stanzas,  "The 
New-Year  Babe,"  Father  Tabb  tells  us  how 

[78] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

Two  together,  Babe  and  Year, 

At  the  midnight  chime, 
Through  the  darkness  drifted  here 

To  the  coast  of  Time. 

After  a  journey  to  "the  land  of  May"  and  on 
"through  the  Vale  of  Autumn  to  the  Mount  of 
Snow," 

Then  together  Babe  and  Year 

Slept :  but  ere  the  dawn, 
Vanishing,  I  know  not  where, 

Brother  Year  was  gone! 

Father  Tabb  has  honored  Maidenhood  by 
many  pure  and  lovely  conceptions.  My  readers 
will  pardon  me  if  I  choose  two  that  touch  upon 
the  shadow  of  life,  poems  that  leave  a  feeling 
of  exquisite  sadness  that  the  heart  often  loves 
better  than  mirth.  The  first  is  entitled 

MAIDEN  BLOOM 

Where  the  youthful  rivals  meet — 

Reddest  Rose  and  whitest  Snow — 
From  a  trysting-place  so  sweet, 

Which  will  soonest  go? 
"Hence  with  life  alone  I  stray," 

Blushed  the  flower  of  balmy  breath. 
"Mine,"  the  snow-wreath  sighed,  "to  stay 

Steadfast  e'en  in  death." 

The  second  poem  is  a  favorite,  and  was 
copied  very  widely  when  it  first  appeared  in  one 
of  the  leading  magazines  of  the  country.  "The 

[79] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

White  Jessamine"  sings  its  own  idyl  of  love  for 
the  little  maiden  who  had  planted  it  and  lov 
ingly  watched  its  climbing  tendrils,  but  ere  it 
had  throbbed  into  bloom  suddenly  fell  ill.  The 
Jessamine  at  last  in  the  stillness  of  night  reaches 
her  window,  where,  it  tells  us, 

Her  gentle  whisper  thrilled  me 
Ere  I  gazed  upon  her  face. 

I  waited,  darkling,  till  the  dawn 
Should  touch  me  into  bloom, 

While  all  my  being  panted 
To  outpour  its  first  perfume ; 

When,  lo !  a  paler  flower  than  mine 
Had  blossomed  in  the  gloom ! 

Was  ever  Death  symbolized  with  such  deli 
cacy — such  soft  and  touching  picturesqueness  of 
suggestion? 

There  is  a  charm  natural  and  sweet  combined 
with  innocent  restfulness  in  the  dainty  question 
and  answer  Allegory,  uThe  Playmates." 

Who  are  thy  playmates,  boy? 
"My  favorite  is  Joy, 
Who  brings  with  him  his  sister,  Peace,  to  stay 

The  livelong  day. 
I  love  them  both;  but  he 
Is  most  to  me." 

And  where  thy  playmates  now, 
O  man  of  sober  brow? 
"Alas!  dear  Joy,  the  merriest,  is  dead. 

But  I  have  wed 
Peace;  and  our  babe,  a  boy, 

New-born,  is  Joy." 

[80] 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
FATHER  TABB'S  FRIENDSHIP  WITH  SIDNEY 

LANIER 

The  memories  of  many  noble  and  tender 
friendships  are  scattered  through  the  pages  of 
Father  Tabb's  poems,  but  one  stands  luminous: 
a  veritable  pillar  of  light  to  the  poet,  it  would 
seem,  was  Sidney  Lanier — of  whom  we  made 
an  earlier  mention.  Besides  his  poems,  Mr. 
Lanier  wrote  novels,  historical  studies,  essays, 
and  a  valuable  work  on  the  relations  between 
music  and  poetry  called  "The  Science  of  Eng 
lish  Verse."  Stedman,  the  great  American  poet 
and  critic,  wrote:  "When  Sidney  Lanier  died 
(in  1881),  not  only  the  South  that  bore  him, 
but  the  whole  country  and  our  English  rhythm 
underwent  the  loss  of  a  rare  being."  On  the 
dedication  page  of  Father  Tabb's  "Poems"  his 
name  is  set  in  immortal  lines: 

AVE  :  SIDNEY  LANIER 

Ere  Time's  horizon-line  was  set, 
Somewhere  in  space  our  spirits  met, 
Then  o'er  the  starry  parapet 

Came  wandering  here. 
And  now  that  thou  art  gone  again 
Beyond  the  verge,  I  haste  amain 
(Lost  echo  of  a  loftier  strain) 

To  greet  thee  there. 

[81] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

In  "Love's  Hybla"  and  many  other  lyrics  the 
poet  sends  his  minor  strain  up  to  his  departed 
friend  reigning  in  immortality.  Here  is  one  of 
these  deep  heart  poems: 


TO  SIDNEY  LANIER 

The  dewdrop  holds  the  heaven  above 

Wherein  a  lark  unseen 
Outpours  a  rhapsody  of  love 

That  fills  the  space  between. 

My  heart  a  dewdrop  is,  and  thou, 

Dawn-spirit,  far  away 
Fillest  the  void  between  us  now 

With  an  immortal  lay. 

Their  poetic  styles  are  in  remarkable  con 
trast.  Rich,  magnificent,  diffuse,  Lanier  rolls 
out  his  verses  in  great  waves  of  song,  and, 
while  they  are  pervaded  with  a  highly  sensuous 
beauty  and  overflowing  with  human  sympathies, 
here  and  there  you  encounter  lofty  conceptions 
of  the  greatness  of  God  which  bring  you  to  your 
knees  in  worship  and  make  manifest  the  secret 
of  the  bond  that  so  welded  Father  Tabb's  soul 
to  his.  But  Father  Tabb  moves  and  breathes 
in  the  heavenly  atmosphere — he  would  have 
everything  in  nature,  in  art,  in  life,  bring  us  into 
closer  relations  with  the  Creator,  with  the  Re 
deemer,  with  Heaven;  he  would  sow  a  seed  in 
our  heart  of  faith  heroic,  of  hope  unfading,  of 
love  unutterable. 

[82] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

It  will  not  be  amiss  to  give  a  specimen  of 
.Sidney  Lanier's  verse.  Of  all  his  poems,  I 
yielded  most  spontaneously  to  the  fascinations 
of  "The  Marshes  of  Glynn,"  a  poem  of  one 
hundred  and  five  lines,  which  first  appeared 
anonymously  and  attracted  attention  at  once  by 
its  exquisite  word-painting,  its  rich  imagery,  and 
its  musical  quality.  One  must  read  the  whole 
poem  in  a  quiet  mood  to  appreciate  its  beauty. 

THE  MARSHES  OF  GLYNN 

O  braided  dusks  of  the  oak  and  woven  shades  of  the 

vine, 
While  the  riotous  noonday  sun  of  the  June  day  long 

did  shine, 
Ye  held  me  fast  in  your  heart  and  I  held  you  fast  in 

mine ; 

But  now  when  the  noon  is  no  more,  and  riot  is  rest, 
And  the  sun  is  a-wait  at  the  ponderous  gate  of  the 

West, 
And  the  slant  yellow  beam  down  the  wood-aisle  doth 

seem 
Like  a  lane  into  Heaven  that  leads  from  a  dream — 


Bending  your  beauty  aside,  with  a  step  I  stand 
On  the  firm-packed  sand, 

Free 
By  a  world  of  marsh  that  borders  a  world  of  sea. 


Ye  marshes,  how  candid  and  simple  and  nothing-with 
holding  and  free 

Ye  publish  yourselves  to  the  sky  and  offer  yourselves 
to  the  sea! 

[83] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABS 

Tolerant  plains,  that  suffer  the  sea  and  the  rains  and 

the  sun, 
Ye  spread  and  span  like  the  catholic  man  who  hath 

mightily  won 

God  out  of  knowledge  and  good  out  of  infinite  pain, 
And  sight  out  of  blindness  and  purity  out  of  a  stain. 

As  the  marsh-hen  secretly  builds  on  the  watery  sod, 
Behold  I  will  build  me  a  nest  on  the  greatness  of  God ! 
I  will  fly  in  the  greatness  of  God  as  the  marsh-hen  flies 
In  the  freedom  that  fills  all  the  space  'twixt  the  marsh 

and  the  skies: 

By  so  many  roots  as  the  marsh-grass  sends  in  the  sod 
I  will  heartily  lay  me  a-hold  on  the  greatness  of  God : 
Oh,  like  to  the  greatness  of  God  is  the  greatness  within 
The  range  of  the  marshes,  the  liberal  marshes  of 

Glynn. 

Father  Tabb's  appreciation  of  Sidney  Lanier's 
poems  is  unique — before  him  he  "hides  his 
diminished  head,"  calls  himself,  as  you  have 
read,  "Lost  echo  of  a  loftier  strain."  An 
eminent  English  critic  remarks,  however:  "It 
is  interesting  to  contrast  the  long,  voluminous, 
rushing  flow  of  Lanier  .  .  .  with  the 
minute,  delicately  carved  work  of  his  country 
man.  Which  is  the  greater  poet,  let  those  who 
like  giving  marks  decide ;  but  Father  Tabb, 
working  within  the  limits  which  the  nature  of 
his  art  inevitably  determined,  piping,  so  to 
speak,  upon  his  flute,  can  do  things  which 
Lanier's  great  four-manual  organ  could  never 
accomplish." 

I  was  surprised  and  pleased  some  months 
ago  by  a  tender  little  note  from  Mrs.  Sidney 

[84! 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

Lanier,  who  had  heard  of  my  forthcoming 
sketch  of  Father  Tabb.  The  poet-priest  re 
mained  devoted  to  her  in  the  bonds  of  sym 
pathy  and  holy  friendship  until  his  death.  Her 
deep  sensitive  nature  never  recovered,  I  think, 
the  shock  of  her  gifted  husband's  death;  and 
Father  Tabb  used  to  deplore  her  failing  health 
to  his  friends.  Here  is  her  missive : 

"To  the  lover  of  Sidney  Lanier's  poems, 
whose  kind  greeting  has  come  to  me  by  Father 
Hasenfus,  I  would  return  the  sympathy  and 
thanks  of  her  friend-in-will  and  her  friend-in- 
Christ. 

"MARY  DAY  LANIER. 
"September  ijth,  1914, 

Lanier  Camp,  Eliot,  Maine. " 

Father  Tabb  was  present  at  the  Lanier 
Memorial  Meeting  in  Johns  Hopkins  Univer 
sity,  Baltimore,  and  paid  the  eloquent  tribute  of 
lifelong  admiration  and  love  to  Sidney  Lanier's 
genius.  From  the  far-away  year  of  his  prison 
life,  his  memory  had  faithfully  retained  one 
cherished  theme  of  Lanier's  Flute;  this  he  gave 
to  Mr.  E.  E.  Trumbull,  who  arranged  and  har 
monized  it  under  the  title:  "A  Melody  from 
Sidney  Lanier's  Flute."  Father  Tabb  popu 
larized  the  song  by  some  accompanying  lines. 


[85] 


CHAPTER  XIX 

HIS   FRIENDSHIP  WITH   BISHOP   CURTIS 
UNIVERSAL  BROTHERHOOD 

Knowing  the  friendship,  of  a  celestial  order, 
that  bound  him  to  Bishop  Curtis  from  his 
youthful  years,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  a  num 
ber  of  the  poems  owe  their  inspiration  to  the 
Bishop,  while  others  are  tenderly  reminiscent 
of  his  "angel  visits."  The  saintly  prelate's 
chief  and  recognized  virtue  was  his  profound 
humility;  and  the  disciple,  I  suspect,  was  "un 
der  orders"  not  to  set  his  Master's  name  upon 
his  immortal  pages.  It  was  a  marvel  that  he 
was  permitted  to  dedicate  to  him  the  beautiful 
"Rosary  in  Verse."  Among  the  poems  to 
which  my  belief  on  this  point  clings  is 

WESTWARD 

And  dost  thou  lead  him  hence  with  thee, 

O  setting  sun, 
And  leave  the  shadows  all  to  me 

When  he  is  gone? 
Ah,  if  my  grief  his  guerdon  be, 

My  dark  his  light, 
I  count  each  loss  felicity, 

And  bless  the  night. 

"Photographed"  and  "O'erspent"  equally 
point  to  Bishop  Curtis  as  their  source  of  being, 
as  well  as  the  deep  and  sincere  heart-cry, 

[86] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

ALTER  EGO 

Thou  art  to  me  as  is  the  sea 

Unto  the  shell; 
A  life  whereof  I  breathe,  a  love 

Wherein  I  dwell. 

And  no  one  can  doubt  that  his  friend  in  dying 
inspired  "Finis,"  one  of  the  last  poignant 
strains  of  the  lyrist's  heart.  It  is  touched  with 
indescribable  pathos  because  of  the  cruel  suf 
ferings  of  his  holy  director  during  the  illness 
preceding  his  death  in  1908,  and  Father  Tabb's 
own  blindness  and  fast-failing  health. 

FINIS 
O  to  be  with  thee  sinking  to  thy  rest, 

Thy  journey  done ; 
The  world  thou  leavest  blessing  thee  and  blest, 

O  setting  sun! 
The  clouds,  that  ne'er  the  morning  joys  forget, 

Again  aglow, 
And  leaf  and  flower  with  tears  of  twilight  wet 

To  see  thee  go. 

There  is  a  feature  of  universal  brotherhood 
that  cannot  fail  to  impress  one  in  reading  Father 
Tabb.  It  is  the  echo  of  our  Saviour's  words: 
"Love  one  another  as  /  have  loved  you."  My 
choice  shall  fall  upon  three  out  of  many  that 
are  steeped  in  the  fragrance  of  this  doctrine : 

GOD'S  LIKENESS 
Not  in  my  own,  but  in  my  neighbor's  face, 

Must  I  Thine  image  trace ; 
Nor  he  in  his,  but  in  the  light  of  mine, 

Behold  Thy  Face  Divine. 

[87] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

TO  THE  CHRIST 

Thou  hast  on  earth  a  Trinity, — 
Thyself,  my  fellow-man  and  me; 
When  one  with  him,  then  one  with  thee ; 
Nor,  save  together,  Thine  are  we. 

CHARITY 

If  but  the  world  would  give  to  Love 
The  crumbs  that  from  its  table  fall, 
'T  were  bounty  large  enough  for  all 
The  famishing  to  feed  thereof. 

And  Love,  that  still  the  laurel  wins 
Of  Sacrifice,  would  lovelier  grow, 
And  round  the  world  a  mantle  throw 
To  hide  its  multitude  of  sins. 

Perhaps  in  contrast  to  these  I  might  quote  a 
rather  original  and  humorous  conception  pecu 
liar  to  Father  Tabb;  it  is  entitled 

THE  STRANGER 

He  entered ;  but  the  mask  he  wore 

Concealed  his  face  from  me. 
Still,  something  I  had  seen  before 

He  brought  to  memory. 

Who  art  thou?    What  thy  rank,  thy  name? 

I  questioned  with  surprise; 
"Thyself'1  the  laughing  answer  came, 

"As  seen  of  others'  eyes." 

And  the  littleness  of  "Prejudice,"  that  vice 
of  purblind  souls,  that  destroyer  of  a  fellow- 
creature's  influence,  that  stumbling-block  to 

[88] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

many  good  and  noble  works,  is  unfolded  in  four 
lines  of  metaphor: 

A  leaf  may  hide  the  largest  star 

From  Love's  uplifted  eye; 
A  mote  of  prejudice  out-bar 

A  world  of  charity. 

The   priest-poet's   large-hearted   sympathies 
stretched  from  "The  Hermit,"  who, 

High  on  the  mountain-top, 

spelt 

The  name  of  the  Omnipotent,  and  knelt 
In  lowly  reverence  of  adoring  love, 

across  the  great  universe  of  human  struggle 
and  fulfillment  and  tragic  failure  even  to  the 
despairing  outcast  in  "Quo  Vadis?" 

The  sedge  was  sere ;  the  water  still, 
As  waiting  for  the  wintry  chill ; 
When,  shadow-like  along  the  hill, 
She  moved  alone. 


A  plunge,  a  ripple,  and  a  sigh 
Of  waters; — fleeting  soul,  reply, 
Was  it  for  death  of  Love  to  die, 
Or  to  atone? 

You  whose  hearts  are  divided  from  kindred 
hearts,  who  look  back  upon  years  of  separation, 
whereas  Love  should  have  been  playing  chords 
of  harmony  and  union  all  through  your  sad 
dened  lives,  read 

[89] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

LIFE 

The  Power  that  lifts  the  leaf  above 

And  sends  the  root  below, 
Sustains  the  heart  in  brother-love 

And  makes  it  heavenward  grow. 

In  "The  Bridge"  the  poet  symbolizes  and 
prays  for  the  brotherhood  of  the  nations.  The 
last  stanza  of  the  five  is  an  appeal. 

O  that,  all  strife  above, 
Strong  in  the  strength  thereof, 

Man  evermore 
Built,  with  a  broader  span, 
Love  for  his  fellow-man 

From  shore  to  shore! 


[90] 


CHAPTER  XX 


FEASTS   OF   THE    CHURCH.      CHRISTMAS    POEMS 

The  Feasts  of  the  Church  hold  their  conse 
crated  rites  in  the  poet-priest's  sanctuary  of 
Poesy.  There  is  a  little  galaxy  of  Christmas 
poems  of  wondrous  diversity.  I  have  already 
quoted  one  that  concentrates  a  whole  mission 
sermon  in  its  six  starry  lines, — "A  Little  Boy 
of  Heavenly  Birth."  Among  many  others  are 
"The  Lamb-Child,"  "A  Christmas  Cradle," 
"The  Angel's  Christmas  Quest,"  and  the  favor 
ite  allegory  of  the  Christmas  dream,  so  pictorial, 
so  overflowing  with  scriptural  suggestion,  and 
so  redolent  of  deep  peace, — 

MISTLETOE 

To  the  cradle-bough  of  a  naked  tree, 

Benumbed  with  ice  and  snow, 
A  Christmas  dream  brought  suddenly 

A  birth  of  mistletoe. 

The  shepherd  stars  from  their  fleecy  cloud 
Strode  out  on  the  night  to  see; 

The  Herod  north-wind  blustered  loud 
To  rend  it  from  the  tree. 

But  the  old  year  took  it  for  a  sign, 

And  blessed  it  in  his  heart: 
"With  prophecy  of  peace  divine, 

Let  now  my  soul  depart." 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

The  second  chapter  of  St.  Luke's  Gospel  be 
comes  dearer  than  ever  when  you  have  mastered 
that  poem  and  carry  it  in  your  heart.  May  I 
analyze  it  a  little? 

The  poet  has  chosen  the  simplest  form  of 
verse,  as  befits  the  great  theme.  The  rhythm 
is  music :  the  sound  is  perfectly  adapted  to  sense 
in  the  lines.  In  the  second  stanza  the  spondees 
add  to  the  majesty  of  the  first  picture,  and  to  the 
strength  of  the  last. 

From  the  opening  phrase  the  Divine  Infant 
is  the  life  of  the  poem.  "To  the  cradle-bough" 
is  a  lovely  invention,  suggestive  of  birds'  nests 
rocking  in  the  summer  breezes ;  but  then  you  are 
confronted  with 

a  naked  tree 
Benumbed  with  ice  and  snow, 

an  emblem  of  the  wintry  cave  of  Bethlehem, 
where  a  manger  received  the  trembling  frame 
of  the  Babe  new-born ;  typified,  too,  in  the  figure, 
is  the  then  state  of  the  wide,  hopeless,  cold- 
hearted  world.  The  Dream-Feast  and  the 
Birth  seem  like  fairy-land  consecrated. 

How  finely  is  the  Allegory  drawn  out  in  the 
next  stanza  !  The  shepherds  "keeping  the  night 
watches  over  their  flocks"  become  shepherd 
stars,  the  clouds  their  lambs;  and  borne  at  once 
to  the  starry  heavens,  are  we  not  subtly  con 
scious  of  the  angelic  presences,  even  the  har 
monies  of  their  Gloria?  "Strode  out  in  the 

[92] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

night  to  see"  is  a  line  of  power — a  Thompsonian 
line;  and  the  blustering  "northwind"  is  a  mir 
rored  type  of  the  cruel  Herod,  "who  sought 
the  Child  to  destroy  Him,"  and,  foiled  by  the 
Kings,  slew  a  multitude  of  "Innocents,"  secure 
that  His  Blood  would  swell  the  sacrificial  tor 
rent. 

But  what  a  deep  significance  in  "the  old 
year"  !  The  aged  and  boly  Simeon  rises  before 
us,  the  type  of  the  ancient  dispensation,  who 
"entered  the  temple  by  the  Spirit"  just  as  Mary 
and  Joseph  bore  the  Babe-Victim  within  its 
hallowed  precincts  to  present  Him  to  His  Eter 
nal  Father.  Taking  the  Child  in  his  arms,  the 
aged  saint  at  once  knew  his  God,  the  Expecta 
tion  of  Israel,  and,  with  supreme  happiness, 
chanted  his  "Nunc  dimittis," — "Now  dost  Thou 
dismiss  Thy  servant,  O  Lord,  in  peace,  because 
my  eyes  have  seen  Thy  Salvation." 

The  first  soft  slumbers  of  the  new-born 
Infant  are  commemorated  in  twelve  lines  of 
exquisite  imagery — the  last  three  divinely  beau 
tiful,  with  the  glow  of  more  than  seraphic  love. 

AT  THE  MANGER 

When  first  her  Christmas  watch  to  keep, 
Came  down  the  silent  angel,  Sleep, 

With  snowy  sandals  shod, 
Beholding  what  His  Mother's  hands 
Had  wrought,  with  softer  swaddling-bands 

She  swathed  the  Son  of  God. 

[931 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

Then,  skilled  in  mysteries  of  night, 
With  tender  visions  of  delight 

She  wreathed  His  resting  place, 
Till,  wakened  by  a  warmer  glow 
Than  Heaven  itself  had  yet  to  show, 

He  saw  His  Mother's  face. 

Here  we  listen  to  divine  words  from  the  very 
lips  of  "The  Babe  to  the  Gift-Bearer." 

I  cannot  hold  within  My  hands 

Thy  gift,  but  here  My  Mother  stands 

To  take  it  as  My  own. 
It  is  through  her  I  come  to  thee, 
And  now  our  go-between  is  she 

Till  I  am  older  grown. 

There  is  a  haunting  music  from  many 
Epiphany  strains,  with  their  high  faith  rising 
almost  to  vision;  let  us  listen  to  one  that  is  inter 
woven  with  an  ancient  classical  theme,  in 

THE  ARGONAUTS 

To  Bethlehem,  to  Bethlehem, 

The  Magi  move,  and  we  with  them, 

Along  the  selfsame  road ; 
Still  following  the  Star  of  Peace, 
To  find  at  last  the  Golden  Fleece — 

The  Spotless  Lamb  of  God. 


[94] 


CHAPTER  XXI 

PASSION-FLOWERS  AND  EASTER  LILIES 

Father  Tabb  has  planted  in  his  garden  of 
sacred  verse  a  score  of  beautiful  Passion-Flow 
ers,  which  bear  the  heart  to  Calvary  and  Geth- 
semane. 

The  triple  stanzas  of  "The  Vigil  of  Good 
Friday"  might  be  called  a  perfect  elegy  of  St. 
Peter's  denial  of  Christ — UI  know  Him  not" — 
with  its  beautiful  climax  of  repentance, 


O  Christ!  its  perjury 
Love  weeps  for  Thee! 


Mary  the  Immaculate  and  Mary  the  penitent 
are  pictured  to  us  together  during  the  Three 
Hours'  Agony  of  the  Saviour 

ON  CALVARY 

In  the  shadow  of  the  Rood 
Love  and  Shame  together  stood ; 
Love,  that  bade  Him  bear  the  blame 
Of  her  fallen  sister,  Shame  ; 
Shame,  that  by  the  pangs  thereof 
Bade  Him  break  His  Heart  for  Love. 

Father  Tabb's  devotion  to  the  Cross,  the 
chief  consolation  in  all  life's  trials,  is  manifest 
in  many  poems,  touchingly  so  in  his  lines  to  the 
Crucifix  hanging  in  his  room,  and  touched  with 
the  early  sun-rays. 

[95] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

Day  after  day  the  spear  of  morning  bright 
Pierces  again  the  ever-wounded  side, 

Pointing  at  once  the  birthspring  of  the  light 
And  where  for  Love  the  Light  Eternal  died. 

The  last  day  of  Holy  Week  was  a  fount  of 
inspiration  to  the  poet.  "Holy  Saturday"  is 
an  apostrophe  to  "Earth  who  daily  kissed  His 
feet";  in  it  Love  and  Death  enact  a  drama,  and 
every  line  of  the  poem  is  a  study.  Of  excep 
tional  beauty  and  pathos  is 

EASTER  EVE 

Lo,  now  His  deadliest  foes  prevail! 
And  where  His  bleeding  footsteps  fail, 
Like  wolves  upon  a  victim's  trail, 
They  gloat,  in  purple  mockery,  "Hail!" 

O  cloud !     O  regal  vesture  torn ! 
O  shadow  on  the  shoulders  borne ! 
O  diadem ! — one  starry  thorn 
Shall  blossom  into  Easter  morn! 

As  you  descend  the  slope  of  the  Mountain  of 
Redemption,  where  the  Passion-Flowers  bloom, 
lo !  you  come  upon  the  Divine  Gardener  sur 
rounded  by  His  spotless  "Easter  Lilies." 
"Easter  Morning"  welcomes  His  presence; 
"Rabboni"  touchingly  portrays  His  apparition 
to  Magdalen;  and  the  witnesses  to  His  Resur 
rection  are  the 

EASTER  FLOWERS 

We  are  His  witnesses;  out  of  the  dim 
Dank  region  of  Death  we  have  risen  with  Him. 
Back  from  our  sepulchre  rolleth  the  stone, 
And  Spring,  the  bright  Angel,  sits  smiling  thereon. 

[96] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

We  are  His  witnesses.     See,  where  we  lay 
The  snow  that  late  bound  us  is  folded  away; 
And  April,  fair  Magdalen,  weeping  anon, 
Stands  flooded  with  light  of  the  new-risen  Sun! 

Magdalen  has  captivated  our  poet's  heart 
with  as  sure  dominion  as  she  did  the  hearts  of 
Robert  Southwell,  Richard  Crashaw  and  other 
devout  lyrists.  Her  name,  her  love,  her  tears, 
her  spikenard,  lead  the  thought  or  adorn  a 
figure  in  half  a  score  of  his  opals  of  verse. 
"Rabboni"  is  not  the  least  beautiful  of  these 
tributes  of  love. 

"I  bring  Thee  balm,  and  lo,  Thou  art  not  here! 

Twice  have  I  poured  mine  ointment  on  Thy  brow, 
And  washed  Thy  feet  with  tears.    Disdain'st  Thou 
now 

The  spikenard  and  the  myrrh? 

"Has  Death,  alas,  betrayed  Thee  with  a  kiss 

That  seals  Thee  from  the  memory  of  mine?" 
"Mary!"     It  is  the  self-same  Voice  Divine. 

"Rabboni!"— only  this. 


[97] 


CHAPTER  XXII 

MARY  IN  HIS  VERSE.     DOGMAS 

There  is  a  heavenly  attraction  for  the  poet  in 
Mary,  the  Virgin  Mother  of  God,  the  most 
glorious  type  of  womanhood,  the  lily  of  purity, 
the  Spouse  all  fair  and  without  spot,  the  Woman 
clothed  with  the  sun  of  divine  glory  and  love. 
Father  Tabb's  devotion  to  this  perfect  ideal  of 
human  holiness  can  scarcely  be  conceived  ex 
cept  by  one  who  is  profoundly  imbued  with  a 
like  sentiment  of  tender  filial  piety. 

Is  not  this  piety  set  like  a  hidden  jewel  in  the 
lines  which  recall  the  adoption  of  our  race  by 
Mary  on  Calvary? 

SON  OF  MARY 

She  the  Mother  was  of  One — 
Christ,  her  Saviour  and  her  Son. 
And  another  had  she  none? 
Yea:    her  Love's  beloved — John. 

My  readers  are  already  acquainted  with  the 
volumes  "An  Octave  to  Mary"  and  "The 
Rosary  in  Verse,"  dedicated  to  her  love.  These 
rich  offerings,  however,  were  not  enough  for 
one  who  so  often  soared  above  the  stars  to  be 
hold  her  in  her  beauty.  He  portrays  her  from 
the  beginning  in 

[98] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

THE  IMMACULATE  CONCEPTION 

A  Dew-drop  of  the  darkness  born, 

Wherein  no  shadow  lies; 
The  blossom  of  a  barren  thorn, 

Whereof  no  petal  dies; 
A  rainbow  beauty  passion-free, 
Wherewith  was  veiled  divinity. 

The  poet  paints  in  sublime  colors  the  "Fiat" 
of  "The  Annunciation," — "the  flaming  word" 
that  brought  the  Eternal  down  to  a  Virgin's 
womb.  And  the  mystery  is  retold  in  "The  In 
carnation." 

A  weight  to  bow  Thy  Godhead  to  the  ground, 
And  lift  to  Heaven  a  lost  humanity. 

We  have  had  glimpses  of  the  Mother's  love 
liness  shrouded  in  the  glory  of  her  Babe  in  The 
Nativity;  and  we  have  stood  with  her  under  the 
Cross,  suffused  with  emotions  of  awe  and  love 
such  as  stirred  the  depths  of  the  poet's  soul  while 
he  gazed  and  wrote.  Yet  see  how  he  spans  the 
heavens  to  call  us  again  in  worship  to  the  Man 
ger  and  the  Cross  in 

STABAT  MATER 

The  star  that  in  His  splendor  hid  her  own 

At  Christ's  Nativity, 
Abides — a  widowed  satellite — alone 

On  tearful  Calvary. 

The  triumph  of  his  Queen,  the  crowning  act 
of  her  Assumption  into  Heaven,  the  priest-poet 
hymns  in  more  than  one  loving  effusion.  I 

[991 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

quote  a  strain  in  which  lowly  imagery,  wedded 
to  celestial  beauty,  bears  witness  to  the  holy 
audacity  of  Love  in  treating  of  divine  things, 
Love,  grown  familiar — spirit  to  spirit — with 
the  high  courts  of  the  invisible  world. 

THE   ASSUMPTION 

Behold!    the  mother  bird 

The  Fledgeling's  voice  hath  heard ! 

He  calls  anew, 
"It  was  thy  breast 
That  warmed  the  nest 

From  whence  I  flew. 
Upon  a  loftier  tree 
Of  life  I  wait  for  thee ; 
Rise,  mother-dove,  and  come, 
Thy  Fledgeling  calls  thee  home!" 

Father  Tabb's  passionate  love  of  the  Dogmas 
of  the  Church  has  found  ardent  utterance  in  his 
poems,  as  one  is  forced  to  confess;  indeed,  I 
almost  dare  to  say  they  form  his  chief  message. 
The  priest  chants  in  high  and  worthy  and  per 
suasive  verse  the  Eternal  Truths,  the  deep  mys 
teries  of  the  Faith:  "God,  the  All  in  All,"  Im 
mortality,  the  Creation,  the  Fall  and  Redemp 
tion,  the  supreme  love  of  God  and  of  the 
neighbor,  Heaven,  hell  (with  shuddering  beauty 
defending  God's  justice),  and  Purgatory,  the 
Sacraments  and  the  Virtues,  the  glories  of  the 
Priesthood  and  the  Religious  State.  In  truth, 
the  harvest  of  heavenly  wisdom  garnered  in 
these  little  sheaves  of  poesy  is  incalculable;  and 

[100] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

the  Sovereign  Truth  to  whom  they  are  conse 
crated,  as  was  the  whole  life  of  the  poet,  has 
shed  into  them  the  perfumed  essence  of  heavenly 
grace,  that  unction  we  find  so  often  in  the  writ 
ings  of  saints  and  holy  men. 

To  that  most  loyal  son  of  the  Church,  as  to 
Francis  Thompson,  "the  very  arrangement  of 
the  liturgical  year  is  a  suggested  epic,  based  as 
it  is  on  a  deep  parallel  between  the  evolution 
of  the  seasons  and  that  of  the  Christian  soul  of 
the  human  race." 


[101] 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

CONSIDERATION    OF    OTHER    POEMS.      TRAGEDY 
AND  FANCY 

It  has  been  said  by  one  who  studied  under 
Father  Tabb  and  knew  him  well  that  the  sug 
gestive  possibilities  of  his  verse  are  limited  only 
by  the  capacity  of  the  reader;  and  nothing 
could  be  truer,  for  one  must  study  some  of  these 
gnomic  verses  as  a  problem — dig  into  them  as 
into  a  mine  to  make  them  yield  up  all  the  pre 
cious  gems  of  thought,  of  fancy,  of  allusion, 
that  lie  hidden  under  the  rich  loam  of  word  and 
phrase. 

What  mighty  epics  have  been  wrecked  by  time 
Since  Herricic  launched  his  cockle-shells  of  rhyme  ? 

sang  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  and  he  himself 
floated  a  number  of  the  same  frail  boats  upon 
the  sea  of  poesy.  But  I  conceive  that  Herrick 
and  Aldrich  and  many  others  of  famous  name, 
not  excluding  Richard  Crashaw  in  his  "Steps 
to  the  Temple,"  would  veil  their  colors  before 
Father  Tabb's  "cockle-shells"  and  without  envy 
behold  them  far  in  the  lead. 

Yet  Father  Tabb  at  times,  though  rarely, 
gave  larger  play  to  his  thought.  UA  Sigh  of  the 
Sea,"  which  I  consider  one  of  the  most  finished 

[102] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

allegories  I  know,  is  expanded  to  eight  quat 
rains;  so  also  is  'The  Cloud,"  standing  "above 
the  eternal  snows" — his  first  published  effort,  of 
which  he  remarked  "God  gave  me  the  Cloud." 
Six  enchanting  quintets,  varied  in  metre,  are 
dedicated  "To  the  Wood  Robin,"  and  the  same 
number  to  "Echoes,"  for  which  the  poet  has 
lovingly  appropriated  the  stanza  of  Shelley's 
"Ode  to  a  Skylark,"  with  perfect  musical  effect. 
In  the  third  stanza  he  addresses  them : 

Children  of  the  distance, 

Shall  I  call  in  vain? 
From  your  slumbers  waking, 

Speak  to  me  again 
As  erst  in  childhood  woke  your  soft  Aeolian  strain ! 

And  "The  Swallow"  "skims  o'er  the  tide"  in 

a  brilliant  craft  of  six  sestets. 

Tragedy  chants  its  note  of  human  desolation 

in  many  of  the  noble  quatrains,  nowhere,  to  my 

mind,  with  greater  poignancy  than  under  the 

symbol  of 

THE  MAST 

The  winds  that  once  my  playmates  were 
No  more  my  voice  responsive  hear, 
Nor  know  me,  naked  now  and  dumb, 
When  o'er  my  wandering  way  they  come. 

In  "Giulio,"  a  poem  of  rhymed  couplets  (iam 
bic  tetrameter)  which  reads  with  the  ease  of 
blank  verse,  Sorrow  tells  her  tale  with  fuller 
utterance.  Brief  yet  piercing,  thirty-six  lines 

[103] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

suggest  two  life  histories,  one  "dead  to  all  but 
misery!" — the  other  waiting 

The  consecrating  vow 
Of  priesthood. 

How  the  poet  has  painted  the  agony  of  a  sin 
ning  and  repentant  heart,  merging  at  last  into 
ecstatic  joy  at  meeting  with  the  loved  one  in 
the  solemn  hour  of  Death's  anointing! 

Fancy  everywhere  irradiates  Father  Tabb's 
pages,  as  we  have  seen.  Here  is  a  poem  which 
lets  us  into  the  secret  of  her  enchantment,  an 
inspiration  for  an  artist,  and  so  dripping  with 
melody  that  it  seems,  like  many  others,  to  have 
been  composed  to  an  inward  music. 

FANCY 

A  boat  unmoored,  wherein  a  dreamer  lies, 
The  slumberous  waves  low-lisping  of  a  land 

Where  Love,  forever  with  unclouded  eyes, 

Goes,  wed  with  wandering  Music,  hand  in  hand. 

Would  you  see  a  perfect  creation  of  Fancy's 
delicate  brush?  Look  at  sound  magically  trans 
formed  into  vision  in 

WHISPER 

Close  cleaving  unto  Silence,  into  sound 

She  ventures  as  a  timorous  child  from  land, 

Still  glancing,  at  each  wary  step,  around, 
Lest  suddenly  she  lose  her  sister's  hand. 

[104] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

How  fanciful  is  'The  Mist!"  Suddenly 
metamorphosed  into  the  mythic  Eurydice,  she 
rises  from  the  darkness  with  Orpheus,  now  the 
singing  Lark 

That  leads  her  to  the  Dawn 
With  rhapsodies  of  star  delight, 
Till  looking  backward  in  his  flight 

He  finds  that  she  is  gone. 

"Star  delight?"  a  pupil  questioned  one  day. 
"The  poet  perhaps  suggests,"  I  conjectured, 
"that  as  when  Orpheus  came  up  from  the  dark 
ness  of  Erebus  with  his  lost  love,  the  sight  of 
the  starry  heavens  delighted  him,  so  the  stars 
are  still  in  the  sky,  though  shrinking  away, 
as  the  Lark  soars  and  sings  in  'shrill  de 
light.'  And  Orpheus'  lyre,  you  know,  was  set 
in  the  heavens  by  the  ancients — the  beautiful 
little  Constellation,  Lyra,  'with  all  its  star-chord 
seven.' '  But  I  fear  my  hints  will  not  satisfy 
so  readily  some  of  the  grown-ups  who  have 
cavilled  at  the  obscurity  of  "The  Mist." 

Father  Tabb  frankly  plays  with  his  imagery, 
but  how  often  he  rises  from  loveliest  fancy  to 
the  deepest  philosophy  of  life,  as  in 

THE  SEA-BUBBLE 
Yea,  a  bubble  though  I  be, 
Love,  O  man,  that  fashioned  thee 
Of  the  dust,  created  me 
Not  of  earth,  but  of  the  sea: 
Kindred  blossoms  then  are  we — 
Time-blooms  on  eternity. 

[105] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

A  tender  fancy  is  hidden  under  the  lines  "To 
Violet  B.  on  Her  Wedding-Day": 

"Sweet  it  is  for  Love  to  live," 

Thus  a  Blossom  whispered  me, 
"But  for  Love  a  life  to  give 

(Tell  my  sister  Violet — 
For  a  blossom,  too,  is  she) 
Sweeter  yet." 

Had  Father  Tabb  chosen  to  enrich  the  world 
of  music  with  songs  of  his  inditing,  what  a 
prophecy  of  success  he  has  bequeathed  us  in 
"Come  to  Me,  Robin!"  in  "Fade  Not  Yet,  O 
Summer  Day!"  and  in 

Over  the  sea,  over  the  sea, 
My  love  he  is  gone  to  a  far  countrie ; 
But  he  brake  a  golden  ring  with  me, 
The  pledge  of  his  faith  to  be. 

We  can  well  forego  the  songs  of  earth,  how 
ever,  since  our  priest-poet  has  taught  us  sweet 
songs  of  the  heavenly  clime. 


;io6] 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE    SONNETS 

Many  bards  have  sung  the  praises  of  the 
Sonnet:  and  Wordsworth  in  luminous  lines  re 
minds  us  that 

with  this  key 

Shakespeare  unlocked  his  heart ;  the  melody 
Of  this  small  lute  gave  ease  to  Petrarch's  wound  ; 
A  thousand  times  this  pipe  did  Tasso  sound; 

and  Gilder  adds: 

This  was  the  flame  that  shook  with  Dante's  breath ; 
The  solemn  organ  whereon  Milton  played. 

Few,  indeed,  among  the  "Enamored  archi 
tects  of  airy  rhyme,"  of  differing  ages  and  liter 
atures,  have  failed  to  test  their  powers  upon  this 
form  of  poetry  which  has  outlasted  seven  cen 
turies,  and  has  invaded  with  its  fairy  or  solemn 
or  tragic  touch  every  domain  of  knowledge, 
human  and  divine,  every  issue  of  life  and  death, 
of  time  and  eternity.  Yet,  strange  to  say, 
Father  Tabb  held  such  an  instinctive  aversion 
to  the  sonnet — its  complexities  and  restraints — 
that  only  through  the  unceasing  importunities 
of  a  brother  professor  he  was  at  last  prevailed 
upon  to  overcome  his  repugnance.  To  this 
happy  influence  we  owe  some  of  the  most  per- 

[107] 


'• 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

feet  sonnets  in  the  English  language,  too  few, 
alas !  for  there  are  only  thirty,  I  believe,  in  all. 

The  reader  will  find  a  pleasant  suggestion  of 
Shakespeare  in  several  of  these  "little  pictures 
painted  well."  Although  intricate  and  elabo 
rate  in  form,  they  speak  to  us  the  simple  lan 
guage  of  the  heart.  The  rhymed  octave  is 
always  regular;  the  sestet,  is,  in  general,  classic, 
yet,  since  there  are  no  less  than  eighteen  differ 
ent  ways  in  which  a  poet  may  lawfully  adapt  its 
two  or  three  rhymes,  one  is  not  surprised  to  find 
Father  Tabb  adjusting  the  rhyme-order  to  the 
exigencies  of  his  thought.  Add  to  this  his  deli 
cate  management  of  the  cesura,  the  climax  gen 
erally  of  octave  and  sestet,  the  singing  quality 
of  his  verse,  the  unity  which  pervades  every  son 
net,  and,  above  all,  the  exalted  realm  of  his 
thought,  his  fancy,  and  his  personal  sympathies, 
and  who  shall  say  that  our  poet-priest  has  not 
won  unfading  glory  by  touching,  though  reluct 
antly,  this  sonnet-lyre  with  its  fourteen  golden 
strings  ? 

Apart  from  the  sacred  sonnets  I  think  my 
preference  is  for  "Forecast,"  with  its  pictorial 
wealth  of  fancy  and  note  of  prophecy,  which 
was  surely  verified  in  Father  Tabb  himself,  who 
might  well  have  been  the  babe  upon  whose  spirit 

The  dream,  the  song,  the  odor,  each  in  one 
Upbreathing  as  a  starry  vapor,  spread, 
And  from  the  golden  minarets  of  morn, 
Far  heralding  the  unawakened  sun, 
A  rapture  as  of  poesy  outshed. 

[108] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

"Solitude"  spheres  as  much  grief  for  the  loved 
and  lost  in  its  fourteen  lines  of  faultless  rhythm, 
exquisite  phrasing  and  imagery,  and  striking 
climax,  as  Tennyson's  uln  Memoriam."  "Love's 
Retrospect,"  too,  is  a  memorial  urn,  garlanded 
with  flowers,  touched  with  sunlight,  and  dewed 
with  tears;  it  consecrates  a  passing  away  of  such 
moment  to  the  poet  that  he  could  complain  it 
had  left 

a  world  henceforth  to  me 
In  everlasting  twilight. 

Earlier  pages  have  presented  to  my  readers 
characteristic  quotations  from  the  sonnets. 
"Glimpses,"  "Daybreak,"  "The  Dead  Tree," 
abound  in  beauty  and  pathos;  and  "St.  Afra 
to  the  Flames!"  how  exultantly  she  challenges 
them: 

Delay  not!     Leap  the  barriers  and  fire 
The  citadel,  the  heart.    A  flame  is  there 
To  which  your  kiss  is  coldness. 

"Golgotha"  and  other  of  these  art  studies  I 
must  leave  to  the  reader's  quiet  meditation,  re 
producing  only  a  memory  of  the  Night  of  Sor 
row  in  "The  Paschal  Moon,"  which  should  be 
inscribed  in  letters  of  gold  and  read  often  by 
every  heart  that  loves  the  Holy  Hour.  Note 
the  strength  and  profound  pathos  of  the  first 
line,  and  the  power  and  dignity  of  the  double 
climax,  rising  to  the  sublime  in  the  sestet. 

[109] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

THE  PASCHAL  MOON 

Thy  face  is  whitened  with  remembered  woe ; 
For  thou  alone,  pale  satellite,  didst  see, 
Amid  the  shadows  of  Gethsemane, 

The  mingled  cup  of  sacrifice  o'erflow ; 

Nor  hadst  the  power  of  utterance  to  show 
The  wasting  wound  of  silent  sympathy, 
Till  sudden  tides,  obedient  to  thee, 

Sobbed,  desolate  in  weltering  anguish,  low. 

The  holy  night  returneth  year  by  year; 

And,  while  the  mystic  vapors  from  thy  rim 
Distil  the  dews,  as  from  the  Victim  there 

The  red  drops  trickled  in  the  twilight  dim, 
The  ocean's  changeless  threnody  we  hear, 

And  gaze  upon  thee  as  thou  didst  on  Him. 


[no] 


CHAPTER  XXV 

PERSONALITY    OF   THE    POET 

A  few  paragraphs  cited  from  a  brief  review 
of  our  poet  by  an  intimate  friend  will  supply  a 
hiatus  in  these  pages. 

"Poet,  soldier,  priest,  Father  Tabb  united 
in  one  personality  the  qualities  which  distin 
guished  each  individual  calling.  As  a  poet  he 
was  an  idealist,  seeing  beauty  and  harmony  in 
the  lowliest  as  well  as  the  highest  things.  As  a 
soldier  he  was  fearless  and  unswervingly  loyal 
to  the  cause  he  had  championed  in  his  youth, 
while  as  a  priest  he  was  sympathetic  and  helpful 
to  all  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  He  pos 
sessed  the  heart  and  faith  of  a  little  child,  com 
bined  with  the  confidence  in  an  ever-loving  and 
watchful  Providence  that  gave  him  courage  to 
live  joyously,  yet  at  all  times  face  death  un 
flinchingly. 

"In  appearance  Father  Tabb  was  slender  of 
figure,  slightly  above  the  medium  height  and 
quick  of  movement — an  active  man,  who  en 
joyed  long  walks  through  the  blossoming  coun 
try  and  whose  eye  and  spirit  were  attuned  to 
catch  the  beauty  of  every  flower  by  the  wayside. 

"In  manner  he  was  cordially  responsive  or 
shy  and  reserved,  according  to  his  intimacy  with 

[in] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

those  with  whom  he  was  associating.  About 
Ellicott  City  his  face  and  figure  were  familiar 
to  the  entire  community,  with  whom  his  rela 
tions  were  cordial  in  the  extreme.  Into  the 
homes  of  a  few  families  of  the  neighborhood 
the  poet  came  and  went  as  the  mood  impelled 
him.  Always  a  welcome  guest,  he  here  cast 
aside  reserve  and  was  frankly  interested  in  the 
affairs  of  the  day,  ready  to  discuss  with  boyish 
enthusiasm  topics  light  or  serious,  the  last  novel, 
the  latest  drama — for  he  now  and  again  at 
tended  a  good  play — an  inspiring  concert  or  the 
affairs  of  the  nation." 

I  have  to  confess  that,  lacking  the  interesting 
details  of  his  life  history,  I  have  been  compelled 
to  look  into  his  poems  for  revelations  of  him 
self — of  his  inner  life,  of  course,  but  also  of 
his  habits,  and  of  external  accidents  and  cir 
cumstances.  I  know  nothing  more  engrossing, 
more  toil-begetting,  more  perplexing,  than  the 
study  of  a  great  poet  through  his  poems;  yet 
nothing  more  rewarding,  more  satisfying  on  the 
whole,  though  many  of  these  products  of  his 
brain  and  heart  may  tantalize  you  with  their 
indecipherable  significance.  What  more  obvious 
illustration  is  afforded  than  some  of  the  Eliza 
bethan  writers,  whose  enigmatic  lines  conceal 
volumes  of  biography;  startling,  perplexing, 
irreconcilable  to  tradition,  they  often  portray 
a  whole  inner  and  outer  life. 

[112] 


3 

<:• 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

These  pages  have  furnished  to  the  reader 
more  knowledge  of  the  poet  through  his  poems 
than  through  the  paucity  of  my  memoirs.  Per 
haps  with  a  little  pleasant  searching  we  may 
glean  a  few  more  grains  of  truth. 

"Matin-Song"  pictures  to  us  the  opening  of 
Father  Tabb's  day.  He  gave  the  dawning 
hours  to  God  and  counselled  others  to  the  prac 
tice.  It  is  well  to  learn  the  poem  for  its  perfect 
beauty  of  thought  and  diction,  and  to  obey  its 
call,  keeping  the  altar  of  the  heart  "free  for 
sacrifice."  With  what  authoritative  earnestness 
the  poet-priest  utters  the  invitation ! 

MATIN-SONG 

Arise !    Arise ! 

Dawns  not  the  day  without  thy  wakening  eyes ; 
The  mist  that  on  them  lies 
Delays  the  blossom  of  the  eastern  skies. 
'Tis  at  their  light  alone  the  darkness  flies, 
And  Night,  despairing,  dies; 
Behold  thine  altar  free  for  sacrifice! 

Arise !     Arise ! 

And  yet  how  many  poems  announce  that 
Father  Tabb  was  a  victim  of  insomnia  !  "Sleep 
quiets  all  but  me,"  he  laments.  In  "The  Agony," 
a  perfect  sonnet,  he  wrestles 

as  did  Jacob,  till  the  dawn, 
With  the  reluctant  Spirit  of  the  Night 
That  keeps  the  keys  of  Slumber. 

The  Scriptural  wrestling  is  carried  out  in  ex 
quisite  detail,  till  at  last  the  Angel 

[113] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

breathed  upon  my  brow; 
And  as  the  dew  upon  the  twilight  hill 

So  on  my  spirit,  overwearied  now, 
Came  tenderly  the  benediction,  Sleep. 

Insomnia"  is  a  prayer. 

E'en  this,  Lord,  Thou  didst  bless; 

For  'twas  while  others  calmly  slept  around 
That  Thou  alone  in  sleeplessness  wast  found 
To  comfort  me. 

We  may  be  pretty  sure  that  under  such  re 
current  night  watchings  Father  Tabb  courted 
a  siesta  in  the  afternoon;  so  he  seems  to  hint 
in  the  playful  tableau, 

BARGAINS 

"What  have  you  in  your  basket?" 

I  questioned  Mother  Sleep. 
"Ah,  many  a  golden  casket 

Of  jewel-dreams  I  keep 
At  pastime  prices  for  the  friend 
Who's  half  an  hour  or  more  to  spend." 

A  hidden  life,  yet  how  fruitful  in  activities 
was  his !  He  husbanded  the  precious  moments 
— valued  the  present  as  containing  the  whole  of 
life. 

'Tis  in  the  Present  I  am  free 

The  mental  die  to  cast; 
The  future  yet  of  mastery 

Is  palsied  as  the  past ; 
Between,  the  breathless  balance  still 
Awaits  the  hesitating  will. 

[114] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

Among  many  current  events  that  had  an 
abiding  interest  for  the  poet  we  find 

DARIEN 

Thou  partest  sea  from  restless  lover-sea 
That,  yearning,  dream  and  wait 

The  wedding  of  their  waters,  soon  to  be, 
When  Science  opes  the  gate. 

I  feel  that  I  am  treading  on  sacred  ground 
when  I  venture  into  the  temple  of  his  memories. 
"The  Departed"  are  very  near  and  dear  to 
him;  they  cannot  wholly  pass  away, 

For  spirits  in  eternity, 

As  shadows  in  the  sun, 
Reach  backward  into  time  as  we, 

Like  lifted  clouds,  reach  on. 

In  "Retrospect,"  all  his  "old-time  griefs" 
are  seen  in  a  new  phase :  memory  transfigures 
them, 

For  there,  in  reconcilement  sweet, 

The  human  and  divine, 
The  loftiest  and  the  lowliest,  meet 

On  Love's  horizon-line. 

Now  memory  travels  back  to  his  Vita  Nuova, 
and  he  interrogates  "The  Summer  Wind"  : 

Art  thou  the  self-same  wind  that  blew 
When  I  was  but  a  boy? 

Its  voice  is  sadder,  perchance  the  echo  of 
his  own,  he  muses,  now  dwelling  "beside  a  sea 

[115] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

of  memories."  And  as  loved  ones  come  back 
under  its  spell,  he  questions  in  surprise : 

Are  all  the  voices  lost  to  me 

Still  wandering  the  world  with  thee  ? 

What  a  story  of  loneliness  of  heart,  of  thirst 
for  sympathy  from  his  fellows  is  intimated  in 
"Exaltation!"  He  apostrophizes  the  "Leaf 
upon  the  highest  bough,  the  Poet  of  the  woods" 
— a  symbol  of  himself  and  of  all  souls  great  in 
art.  The  second  stanza  reads: 

O  leaf  upon  the  topmost  height, 
Amid  thy  heritage  of  light, 

Unsheltered  by  a  shade, 
'Tis  thine  the  loneliness  to  know 
That  leans  for  sympathy  below, 

Nor  finds  what  it  hath  made. 

Who  does  not  recall  Michel  Angelo,  alone 
Amid  his  frescoes  half  divine, 

longing  for  a  word  of  sympathy,  of  appreciation 
from  a  human  being;  and  this  failing,  behold! 
he  pulls  his  Crucifix  from  his  breast,  raises  it 
aloft  before  his  last  wonderful  creation,  and 
asks  beseechingly:  "Is  that  not  beautiful,  my 
Lord?"  This  longing  is  the  seal  of  the  kinship 
of  genius  with  his  brother-man. 


[116] 


CHAPTER  XXVI 
A  SACRIFICE.     "CONSECRATION" 

There  is  a  group  of  poems  that  to  me  are 
redolent  of  the  incense  of  life's  supreme  sacri 
fice.  I  consider  they  can  have  but  one  solu 
tion — and  that  a  heavenly  one — ties  rent  wil 
lingly  that  two  souls  might  walk  in  a  higher 
vocation,  a  parting  till  the  eternal  years. 
"Love's  Autograph"  reads: 

Once  only  did  he  pass  my  way. 

"When  wilt  thou  come  again? 
Ah,  leave  some  token  of  thy  stay!" 

He  wrote  (and  vanished),  "Pain." 

"An  Influence"  is  permeated  with  a  celestial 
loveliness:  the  symbol  in  the  last  stanza  rises 
into  sublimity  with  ua  life's  libation." 

I   see   thee — heaven's  unclouded   face 

A  vacancy  around  thee  made; 
Its  sunshine  a  subservient  grace 

Thy  lovelier  light  to  shade. 

I  feel  thee  as  the  billows  feel 

A  river  freshening  the  brine; 
A  life's  libation  poured  to  heal 

The  bitterness  of  mine. 

I  quote  the  poem  "Consummation"  without 
comment.  It  veils  an  experience  that  only  the 
deep  sympathetic  insight  of  a  rare  reader,  per 
haps,  can  understand  or  interpret. 

[n7l 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

The  interval 
We  both  recall, 
To  each  was  all — 

A  moment's  space 
That  time  nor  space 
Can  e'er  efface. 

'Tis  all  our  own — 
A  secret  known 
To  us  alone: 

My  life  to  thee, 
As  thine  to  me, 
Eternity. 

It  is  not  without  an  emotion  of  holy  awe  that 
we  can  take  the  poet's  hand  and  enter  with  him, 
at  his  own  solicitation,  into  the  sanctuary  where 
that  solemn  sacrifice  of  the  heart  is 

ENSHRINED 

Come  quickly  in  and  close  the  door, 
For  none  hath  entered  here  before, 
The  secret  chamber  set  apart 
Within  the  cloister  of  the  heart. 

Tread  softly !    'Tis  the  Holy  Place 
Where  memory  meets  face  to  face 
A  sacred  sorrow,  felt  of  yore, 
But  sleeping  now  forevermore. 

Love  would  not  wake  it,  nor  efface 
Of  anguish  one  abiding  trace, 
Since  e'en  the  calm  of  Heaven  were  less, 
Untouched  of  human  tenderness. 

[118] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

"Cloistered"  adds  another  crystal  stone  to 
this  edifice  of  conjecture: 

Within  the  compass  of  mine  eyes 
Behold  a  lordly  city  lies — 

A  world  to  me  unknown, 
Save  that  along  its  crowded  ways 
Moves  one  whose  heart  in  other  days 

Was  mated  to  mine  own. 

I  ask  no  more;  enough  for  me 
One  heaven  above  us  both  to  see, 

One  calm  horizon-line 
Around  us,  like  a  mystic  ring 
That  Love  has  set,  encompassing 

That  kindred  life  and  mine. 

There  are  other  poems  and  parts  of  poems  in 
which  these  sublimated  memories  of  the  poet 
"are  mirrored  small  in  Paradise."  An  edifice 
of  conjecture,  I  have  conceded:  yet  it  is  not  all 
conjecture  to  me,  and  I  often  wonder  if  the 
grave  has  closed  over  that 

secret  known 
To  us  alone, 

and  if  only  at  the  gates  of  eternity  it  shall  be 
unfolded  by  the  Angel  of  Sacrifice,  with  other 
heroic  acts  of  immolation  made  by  the  poet- 
priest. 

There  is  a  touchingly  personal  poem  which 
has  long  been  for  me  a  source  of  perplexed 
study — "Consecration."  An  English  critic 
said  he  would  be  grateful  to  anyone  who  would 
explain  to  him  the  first  verse,  which  reads  as 
follows : 

[119] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

The  Twilight  to  my  Star, 

Her  hoary  head 
A  Hope  receding  far, 

To  Life  re-led. 

The  "Twilight,"  "hoary  head,"  suggested 
age.  "My  Star"  just  rising,  was,  of  course, 
his  youth.  "My  Star"  could  scarcely  be  "To 
Life  re-led";  but  "her  hoary  head  to  Life  re-led 
a  Hope  receding  far,"  is  easily  comprehensible; 
the  comma  omitted  after  far  would  give  this 
reading.  With  the  punctuation  as  it  stands, 
"Her  hoary  head"  is  made  "A  Hope  receding 
far,"  which  in  my  opinion  cannot  be  made  to 
harmonize  with  the  context. 

My  concern,  however,  was  not  with  textual 
criticism.  I  ached  to  know  who  the  dear  "Twi 
light"  was.  But  first  the  reader  must  have  the 
full  text. 

The  Twilight  to  my  Star, 

Her  hoary  head 
A  Hope  receding  far 

To  Life  re-led. 

Apart  and  poor  I  lay; 

My  fevered  frame 
Slow  withering  away, 

When  soft  she  came, 

From  comfort,  to  my  care ; 

And  Pity  sweet 
Subdued  her,  kneeling  there, 

To  kiss  my  feet. 

[120] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

A  Magdalen  adored 

Her  God  in  Thee : — 
A  greater  love,  O  Lord, 

Anointed  me. 

I  wondered  vainly  if  "Twilight"  were  the 
Mammy  whom  he  so  loved,  or  perhaps  his 
mother,  or  an  elderly  relative.  And  was  uhis 
fevered  frame  slow  withering  away"  after  the 
horrors  of  his  prison  life?  I  could  not  cease 
admiring  the  tenderness  and  humility  of  the  act 
recorded  in  the  third  stanza, — the  last  line  itali 
cized  by  the  poet  himself: 

And  Pity  sweet 
Subdued  her,  kneeling  there, 
To  kiss  my  feet. 

At  last,  just  as  this  little  book  is  prepared 
for  the  press,  the  solution  comes  to  me  from  a 
dear  young  friend  of  the  poet.  While  teaching 
at  Saint  Paul's  School,  Baltimore,  in  1868, 
young  Professor  Tabb  became  seriously  ill  of 
typhoid  fever.  He  was  removed  to  the  home 
of  Charles  Herman,  M.  D.,  where  every  care 
and  attention  was  lavished  on  him,  especially 
by  the  doctor's  aged  mother,  whose  heart  over 
flowed  with  love  and  compassion  for  the  South 
ern  youth.  One  day  when  the  fever  was  at  its 
height,  she  entered  the  sickroom  and,  believing 
herself  undetected  by  the  patient,  who  seemed 
asleep,  the  venerable  old  lady  "kneeling  there" 

[121] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

kissed  his  feet,  and  by  her  act,  compared  to 
Magdalen's,  has  immortalized  herself  most 
sweetly  in  "Consecration."  i  think  the  poet 
raises  the  poem  to  a  climax  in  giving  it  so  ex 
alted  a  title. 


[122] 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE    POET'S    FAILING    SIGHT 

An  unpretentious  little  poem  entitled  "The 
Tree,"  written  in  1905,  in  which  I  solicited  of 
Father  Tabb  another  harvest  of  fruit  in  a  new 
book  of  poems,  called  forth  the  following  re 
sponse  : 

"March  3,  1905. 

"Thank  you,  dear  ,  for  'The  Tree' 

which  ...  If  you  knew  me  personally  you 
would  never  so  idealize  a  poor  old  'limb.'  How 
very  much  enchantment  a  little  distance  lends! 
.  .  .  I  am  the  last  of  my  family  now,  my 
sister  and  the  boy  I  love  both  being  gone  to,  I 
hope,  a  happier  world.  All  that  has  happened 
shows  the  goodness  of  God,  for  my  loss  is  their 
gain.  Remember  them  sometimes ! 
The  older  I  grow,  the  more  am  I  impressed  by 
the  wonderful  'Ancient  Mariner,'  and  I  should 
like  to  be  present  at  your  lecture.  May  all  suc 
cess  attend  it ! 

"Yours  in  Christ  faithfully, 

"JOHN  B.  TABB." 

His  tender  and  protecting  love  for  his  sister 
is  touchingly  manifest  in  a  previous  letter  (Jan 
uary  5,  1903). 

[123] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABS 

"Thank  you,  dear ,  for  your  cordial 

greeting,  and  know  that  you  have  my  best 
wishes  and  blessing  for  the  year  just  begun. 

.  .  My  vacation  was,  for  the  most  part, 
spent  at  my  sister's  bedside.  She  is  a  partial 
paralytic,  and  so  helpless  that  she  cannot  stand 
alone.  The  summer  is  always  most  trying  for 
her;  so,  except  when  I  went  to  the  Springs  for 
my  eyes,  every  vacation  has  been  spent  with  her 
at  home.  Say  a  prayer  for  her  sometimes." 

This  intense  brotherly  love  inspired  some  of 
his  most  pathetic  poems.  I  think  "Noche 
Triste,"  "The  Night  that  Bore  Me  to  my 
Dead,"  and  "Consolation"  were  inscribed  to  her 
memory.  Their  union  of  heart  and  their  perfect 
congeniality  in  regard  to  the  spiritual  and 
aesthetic  relations  of  life  made  the  great  solace 
of  his  later  years ;  and  her  pride  in  him  was  pro 
portioned  to  the  depth  of  her  sisterly  affection. 
The  "lecture"  alluded  to  was  an  illustrated 
reading  of  Coleridge's  poem  by  my  pupils. 

Father  Tabb  refers  to  his  failing  sight  in  a 
letter  of  March,  1906.  "My  eyesight,  dear 

,  though  better  than  it  was,  forbids  me 

much  more  than  my  necessary  work,  and  even 
this  sometimes  I  have  to  postpone  to  'a  more 
convenient  season.' ' 

It  was  evidently  during  this  season  that  his 
prayerful  attitude  of  soul  toward  his  affliction 
as  well  as  his  painful  balancing  between  hope 
and  fear  found  expression  in  the  pathetic  poem, 

[124] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

FIAT  LUX 

"Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread,"  and  light: 
For  more  to  me,  O  Lord,  than  food  is  sight; 

And  I  at  noon  have  been 
In  twilight,  where  my  fellow-men  were  seen 
"As  trees"  that  walked  before  me.    E'en  today 
From  time  to  time  there  falls  upon  my  way 
A  feather  of  the  darkness.     But  again 
It  passes ;  and  amid  the  falling  rain 
Of  tears,  I  lift,  O  Lord,  mine  eyes  to  Thee, 

For  lo!  I  see! 

The  last  lines  in  his  own  hand  with  which 
the  poet  favored  me  came  penciled  on  a  postal, 
the  three  central  lines  so  intermingled  that  a 
powerful  reading  glass  was  necessary  to  locate 
the  words.  "20  July,  '08.  Your  prayers,  dear 

,  have  not  kept  me  from  the  dark,  but 

enable  me  to  bear  it  with  greater  patience. 
How  very  few  men  can  say  that  in  the  detrac 
tion  of  daylight  a  great  blessing  too  is  theirs! 
God  keep  you  and  bring  you  closer  to  Himself 
prays  daily,  Always  your  friend  in  Xt,  John 
B.  Tabb." 

In  the  middle  of  August  through  a  friend 
he  gave  this  statement  to  the  public  press :  "My 
sight  nearly  gone,  I  remain  where  I  am — not 
as  the  faculty  would  generously  have  me,  a  pen 
sioner  of  the  college — but  paying  as  long  as  I 
am  able,  full  board.  It  is  only  to  keep  me  from 
seeking  some  asylum  that  the  faculty  consents 
to  my  having  my  own  way — the  greatest  kind 
ness  it  can  do  me." 

[125] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

Later  in  the  same  year  a  postal,  probably  in 
the  hand  of  one  of  his  boys,  brought  me  words 
of  cheer: 

"Nov.  27,  '08. 

uThank  you,   dear  ,   for  your  very 

kind  letter.  Thank  God,  I  am  able  still  to  say 
the  Mass  daily — a  blessing  I  may  hope  to  have 
even  in  the  dark.  My  dear  boys  leave  nothing 
undone  for  my  happiness,  so  do  not  imagine  me 
gloomy  or  depressed.  With  blessing,  and  ask 
ing  your  pious  remembrance,  I  am  always  your 
friend  in  Christ, 

"JOHN  B.  TABS." 

(Signed  in  pencil  by  himself.) 

Father  Tabb's  poems  had  for  many  years 
been  a  sine  qua  non  in  my  poetry  classes.  Only 
the  poetry  of  the  Bible  or  portions  of  the 
Shakespearean  drama  could  elicit  a  greater 
share  of  enthusiasm.  A  morning  with  the  poet- 
priest  was  a  morning  of  perfect  delight  as  well 
as  of  literary  culture.  During  this  and  the  pre 
vious  year  his  approaching  blindness  had 
wrought  upon  their  sympathies ;  and  as  Thanks 
giving  Day  neared,  desiring  to  pay  him  a  little 
tribute  of  gratitude  and  respect,  they  united  in 
purchasing  a  basket  of  fruit  which  they  ex 
pressed  to  him  for  that  morning.  The  usual 
prompt  answer  (in  an  alien  hand)  bore  them 
this  message: 

[126] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

"Nov.  28,  '08. 

"My  dear  young  Friends:  I  have  never 
before  been  willing  to  be  judged  by  my  fruits; 
but  now,  through  your  kindness,  I  could  ask 
nothing  better.  With  blessing,  believe  me  very 
gratefully  yours, 

"JOHN  B.  TABB." 

But  to  me  came  a  letter  deprecating  "so 
costly  a  gift  from  your  pupils."  The  closing 
lines  were:  "Please  let  nothing  like  it  ever  be 
done  again,  and  make  the  girls  know  how  grate 
ful  I  am  to  them." 


[127] 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

BLINDNESS.       DECLINE  OF  HEALTH 

The  affliction  that  had  been  threatening  our 
poet  from  early  childhood,  though  long  de 
layed,  had  then  come  at  last.  He  accepted  its 
apparently  intolerable  conditions  in  a  noble  and 
resigned  spirit.  Partial  helplessness  was  now 
his  earthly  lot,  yet  the  soul  that  had  loved  soli 
tude  and  communion  with  God  and  nature  was 
now  lifted  into  a  mountain  air  of  spirituality, 
where,  though  the  agony  of  Gethsemane  sweeps 
over  the  lower  faculties,  yet  hope  and  love  pre 
vail,  and  maintain  in  the  summit  of  the  spirit 
the  serene  atmosphere  in  which  the  indwelling 
of  God  is  known  and  enjoyed.  His  own  word 
vouches  for  this  in  his  poem  "Going  Blind," 
published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  through 
which  the  world  first  learned  that  its  favorite 
poet  sat  in  darkness. 

GOING  BLIND 

Back  to  the  primal  gloom 

Where  life  began, 
As  to  my  mother's  womb 

Must  I  a  man 

Return : 
Not  to  be  born  again, 

But  to  remain: 

And  in  the  School  of  Darkness  learn 
What  mean 

The  things  unseen. 

[128] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

And  the  same  assurance  is  reiterated  in 
"Proximity." 

If  closer  to  the  Living  Light 
In  darkness  let  me  stay. 

Memory  had  laid  up  a  rich  associational  mass 
in  the  beauty  and  glory  of  nature,  in  the  mental 
and  spiritual  treasures  which  he  could  still  en 
joy;  and  the  friendship  and  love  which  clung  to 
him  from  a  multitude  of  admirers  and  friends 
was  a  pleasure  and  a  solace;  but  he  who  had 
portrayed  in  deathless  pictures  the  invisible 
glories  of  the  saints,  of  the  King  and  the  Queen 
of  Saints,  took  his  chief  delight  now  in  closer 
companionship  with  them.  His  steps  led  him 
often  to  the  Chapel,  where  his  heart  ever  dwelt; 
and  he  still  had  the  happiness  of  offering  the 
daily  Sacrifice  of  the  Mass.  He  made  his  afflic 
tion  indeed  a  diadem  upon  his  priestly  brow. 

His  joyous  and  optimistic  spirit  still  led  him 
as  of  old  into  the  sunny  fields  of  humor;  he 
could  even  make  merry  with  his  blindness.  One 
of  his  limericks  refers  to  a  current  event  of  the 
year,  and  is  entitled 

HIGH   FLYERS 

There  once  were  two  brothers  named  Wright 
Who  rose  in  aerial  flight; 

But  a  poet  I  know 

That  much  higher  could  go, 
For  he  soared  till  he  got  out  of  sight. 

[129] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

His  health  in  the  meantime  was  persistently 
failing;  he  bore  it  philosophically,  for  death  had 
no  terrors  for  him.  Indeed,  the  thought  of 
death  in  its  various  aspects  seemed  to  have  a 
supreme  attraction  for  his  contemplative  mind. 
His  early  poems  proclaim  that  "Death  is  but 
a  tenderness";  that  it  is  usweet  to  tired  mor 
tality";  and  "The  Gossip,"  "The  Tollmen," 
and  especially  "My  Messmate,"  which  opens 
thus: 

Why  fear  thee,  brother  Death, 
That  sharest,  breath  by  breath, 
This  brimming  life  of  mine? 

make  manifest  the  sweet  relations  that  existed 
in  his  mind  between  Life  and  Death.  But  now 
the  poems  take  on  a  deeper,  more  solemn  note — 
there  is  a  waiting,  an  expectancy,  a  keener  reali 
zation,  of  the  awe-sweet  change  at  hand;  the 
veil  is  falling;  his  eye  glances  from  earth  to 
Heaven  and  from  the  coming  Blessedness  back 
to  the  grave  already  yawning,  full  of  "sunshine" 
to  welcome  him  "Dust  to  Dust." 

"Later  Poems,"  published  posthumously,  are 
fragrant  with  suggestions  of  death  and  immor 
tality,  of  the  resurrection,  and  of  the  glories  of 
"Beatitude." 

Yet  more  than  one  reveals  to  us  the  poet's 
deep  and  feeling  sense  of  his  suffering  and  in 
activity.  Christ  heartens  him  in 

[130] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 


HELPLESSNESS 

In  patience  as  in  labour  must  thou  be 

A  follower  of  Me, 
Whose  hands  and  feet,  when  most  I  wrought  for  thee, 

Were  nailed  unto  a  tree. 

Patience   and  hope  dominate  the  lines   "In 

Extremis": 

Lord,  as  from  Thy  body  bleeding, 
Wave  by  wave  is  life  receding 

From  these  limbs  of  mine : 
As  it  drifts  away  from  me 
To  the  everlasting  sea, 

Blend  it,  Lord,  with  Thine. 

A  personal  note  of  solemn  import  is  struck  in 
the  triad  of  stanzas  of  "The  Vigil,"  "Stay  for 
Me  Here."  In  the  song,  "Fade  Not  Yet,"  we 
meet  the  truism: 

'Tis  the  darkened  hours  that  prove 
Faith  or  faithlessness  in  love. 

The  poet's  consciousness  of  the  nearer  ap 
proach  of  the  pale  Angel  is  intimated  strik 
ingly  in  "Death" : 

I  passed  him  daily,  but  his  eyes, 
On  others  musing,  missed  me, 

Till  suddenly,  with  pale  surprise, 

He  caught  and  clasped  and  kissed  me. 

Since  then  his  long-averted  glance 

Is  fixed  upon  my  countenance. 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

One  of  his  latest  gems,  I  think,  was  a  little 
allegorical  poem  which  bore  the  title 

IN  BLINDNESS 

For  me  her  life  to  consecrate, 

My  Lady  Light 
Within  her  shadowy  convent  gate 

Is  lost  to  sight.     . 

I  may  not  greet  her;  but  a  grace — 

A  gleam  divine — 
The  rapture  of  her  hidden  face 

Suffuses  mine. 

But  the  chimes  of  earth  are  growing  faint  and 
the  harmonies  of  the  Eternal  Kingdom  are  al 
ready  sounding  in  his  ears.  In  the  light  of  the 
Divine  Essence  flowing  into  his  spirit  he  sits 
with  darkened  sense  and  transmits  to  us  a  mes 
sage  from  Heaven  in 

BEATITUDE 

And  is  it  well  with  thee  ? 

Ay,  past  all  dreaming,  well! 

For  here  we  dwell 

Where  none  may  weep, 
And  Paradise  is  ours  again  to  keep — 
The  tree  of  Knowledge  in  the  midst  thereof. 


All  round  us  angels  be 

To  guard  the  gateways,  not  with  sword  of  flame, 
But  fragrant  breathings  of  the  holy  Name, 
That  nevermore  an  after  thought  of  sin 
May  enter  in. 

[132] 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

DEATH   OF   FATHER  TABB.       FUNERAL   EULOGY 

In  the  fall  of  1909  the  health  of  Father  Tabb 
suffered  a  sensible  diminution;  and  in  November 
his  illness — bronchial — became  serious,  his 
physical  weakness  and  sufferings  being  aug 
mented,  it  was  thought,  by  the  reaction  of  his 
helpless  condition  on  his  nerves.  Yet  his  death 
on  the  1 9th  came  as  a  shock  to  everyone.  So 
much  seemed  yet  in  the  power  of  the  poet-priest 
to  do  for  the  glory  of  God  and  for  his  fellow- 
men,  though  "Light,  the  prime  work  of  God, 
to  him  extinct." 

The  last  consolations  of  the  Church  had  been 
his,  yet  death  had  not  seemed  so  imminent. 
Only  his  physician  was  watching  by  his  side 
that  fateful  night,  when,  at  1 1  o'clock,  a  sudden 
sinking  spell  came  over  him  and  in  a  few  min 
utes  all  was  over.  Sorrow  and  pain  and  dark 
ness  had  passed  away  forever,  O  Father,  Poet 
of  God, 

and  the  beam 

Of  everlasting  morning  woke  upon 
Thy  dazzled  gaze,  revealing  one  by  one 
Thy  visions  grown  immortal  in  its  gleam ! 

The  funeral  services  were  held  at  St.  Charles 
College  on  November  21,  after  which  the  re 
mains  of  the  beloved  poet-priest  were  borne  to 

[133] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

Richmond,  Va.,  and  consigned  to  their  last  rest 
ing  place  in  Hollywood  Cemetery.  The  eulogy 
of  Father  Tabb's  life  and  works  was  rightly 
spoken  by  one  of  his  most  gifted  priest-pupils, 
the  Reverend  Daniel  J.  Connor,  S.  T.  L.,  of  St. 
Peter's  Cathedral,  Scranton,  Pa.  Through  his 
gracious  kindness  I  am  enabled  to  place  his 
noble  estimate  of  the  life  and  character  of  his 
beloved  preceptor  before  my  readers — an  esti 
mate  in  which  heart  and  mind  have  blended 
their  memories  with  a  depth  of  appreciation  and 
affectionate  penetration  rarely  met  with.  I  give 
it  herewith : 

"How  powerless  does  death  seem  in  a  case 
like  this  to  win  a  real  victory!  It  was  surely 
no  violent  transition  by  which  the  soul  of 
Father  Tabb  passed  from  the  temporal  to  the 
eternal.  As  an  exiled  spirit  he  seemed  to  tread 
the  rough  paths  of  earth,  where  most  of  us  are 
content  to  find  a  home.  It  was  never  more  than 
the  thinnest  veil  that  separated  him  from  the 
invisible  world,  and  hid  from  him  the  full  mean 
ing  of  those  intimations  far  beyond,  which  he 
made  the  subjects  of  his  meditation  and  his 
song.  All  nature  was  to  him  an  apocalypse, — a 
partial  revelation  of  the  beauty  that  is  eternal. 

'My  God  has  hid  Himself  from  me 
Behind  whatever  else  I  see,' 

he  said,  and  in  these  words  it  is  not  only  the 
poet  that  speaks,  but  the  man  as  we  all  knew 

[134] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

him ;  and  now  by  his  death  we  do  not  feel  that 
a  life  has  been  rudely  interrupted,  as  in  most 
cases  involuntarily  we  do,  but  that  rather  it  has 
been  emancipated  and  intensified. 

uThe  world  of  spirit,  which  to  him  was  as 
vivid  as  the  world  of  sense,  is  surely  no  strange 
element  for  that  ardent  soul,  which  used  material 
things  not  as  realities,  but  as  shadows  and  sym 
bols.  The  worshiper  has  but  passed  from  the 
portico  into  the  temple.  The  light  of  faith 
which  was  a  lamp  to  him  has  guided  him  safely 
through  the  darkness,  and  in  his  own  beautiful 
words : 

'The  beam 

Of  everlasting  morning  wakes  upon 
His  dazzled  gaze,  revealing  one  by  one 
His  visions  grown  immortal  in  its  gleam.' 

"But  yet  Father  Tabb's  death  is  an  occasion 
of  more  than  ordinary  sorrow.  In  him  the  lit 
erary  world  has  lost  a  great  genius,  our  Alma 
Mater  has  lost  its  chief  ornament,  and  we  have 
lost  more  than  all — a  true  friend.  As  for  the 
value  to  be  attached  to  Father  Tabb's  contribu 
tion  to  our  literature,  only  the  most  discriminat 
ing  critics  have  as  yet  discovered  and  ungrudg 
ingly  allowed  him  the  place  he  is  destined  to 
occupy  among  his  contemporaries.  The  field  of 
his  art  was  a  limited  one,  his  muse  having  never 
aspired  to  anything  more  pretentious  than  the 
lyric,  the  song  that  is 

[135] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABS 

'Brief  to  the  ear,  but  long 
To  love  and  memory,' 

but  in  his  own  province  it  is  doubtful  if  he  has 
ever  been  surpassed. 

"His  work,  however,  was  absolutely  devoid 
of  that  garishness  and  boisterousness  which  win 
the  quick  applause.  He  said: 

'The  noonday  never  knows, 
What  names  immortal  are.' 

Like  that  other  Catholic  poet,  Francis  Thomp 
son,  who  died  a  year  ago,  his  name  was  the 
property  of  the  few  who  are  able  to  discern 
genius  when  it  comes  unheralded,  and,  as  in  his 
case,  the  world  will  no  doubt  be  aroused  to  a 
sense  of  its  loss  only  by  the  announcement  of 
his  death. 

'  'Tis  night  alone  that  shows 
How  star  surpasseth  star.' 

"Nature  endowed  him  abundantly  with  the 
gifts  which  make  the  poet.  He  was  possessed 
first  of  all  with  a  rare  faculty  of  intuition,  upon 
which,  much  more  than  upon  reasoning,  he  de 
pended  as  a  guide,  not  only  in  detecting  aesthetic 
values,  but  also  in  judging  the  characters  and 
situations  of  every-day  life.  And  well  he  might, 
for  it  was  well  nigh  infallible.  This  keenness 
of  perception  enabled  him  to  seize  those  more 
elusive  phases  of  beauty,  which  are  like  revela 
tions  of  our  hidden  selves,  that  only  the  true 
poet  can  make  known  to  us.  Then  the  exquisite 

[136] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

music  of  his  verse,  which  is  almost  suggestive  of 
some  set  melody,  the  sureness  and  felicity  of  his 
expression,  the  purity  of  his  language,  the  mas 
culinity  of  his  thought,  the  utter  artlessness,  if 
I  may  say  so,  of  his  art — these  qualities  consti 
tute  his  unassailable  patent  of  nobility  in  the 
world  of  letters. 

"But  Father  Tabb,  as  he  will  always  linger 
in  our  memory,  was  essentially  a  worshiper. 
His  art  was  not  an  end,  but  a  means.  Poetry 
was  for  him  not  a  substitution  for  religion,  but 
an  inspiration  that  made  religion  the  more  nec 
essary.  Although  he  worshiped  at  a  thousand 
shrines,  it  was  not  the  god  of  Pantheism,  but 
the  God  of  faith,  the  God  of  Revelation.  Child 
of  a  generation  content  with  the  worship  of 
nature,  he  rose  above  the  limitations  of  their 
poetic  creed;  and  true  and  responsive  as  he  was 
to  the  art  tendencies  of  his  day,  he  was  not  a 
man  to  rest  satisfied  with  tendencies,  but  went 
straight  for  the  conclusions  toward  which  they 
converged. 

"Like  St.  Augustine  in  a  former  age,  his  soul 
could  never  be  contented  with  the  vague  mysti 
cism  in  which  literature  is  too  often  satisfied  to 
rest  as  if  there  were  no  higher  philosophy.  He 
craved  for  personal  and  daily  intercourse  with 
his  Maker  and  Saviour.  He  found  in  a  strong, 
practical  Christianity  the  fulfillment  of  these 
aspirations,  which  it  is  one  of  the  highest  charms 
of  poetry  of  the  past  century  to  express;  and 

[i37] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

like  another  Augustine  he  could  say  to  the  in 
tellects  of  his  day,  who  made  their  religion  con 
sist  of  a  kind  of  romantic  but  interminable  and 
impractical  quest  of  the  Holy  Grail :  'Quaerite 
quod  quaeritis.  Sed  ibi  non  est  ubi  quaeritis.' 
His  imagination  could,  it  is  true,  detect  God's 
dwelling  in  the  light  of  setting  suns,  but  his  faith 
found  a  more  real  Presence  in  the  light  of  the 
sanctuary  lamp.  His  religion  was  not  a  senti 
ment,  but  a  service.  It  found  its  best  expression 
not  in  beautiful  verse,  but  in  his  heroic  Chris 
tian  patience,  his  touching  self-denial,  his  abso 
lute  and  unreserved  resignation  to  the  will  of 
God. 

uAs  to  that  one  event  of  his  life  which  meant 
so  much  to  him,  and  to  which  most  of  us  here 
owe  the  opportunity  of  knowing  Father  Tabb 
at  all,  his  conversion  to  the  Catholic  Church, 
I  feel  utterly  at  a  loss  to  speak.  No  one  who 
has  not  himself  taken  the  step  can  tell  either  the 
cost  or  the  gain.  Cost  him  it  did  without  doubt. 
Like  so  many  illustrious  converts  of  the  last  cen 
tury,  and  in  obedience  to  the  same  intellectual 
impulse,  Father  Tabb  unhesitatingly  left  com 
panionships  and  associations  from  which  one  of 
his  affectionate  nature  and  strong  attachments 
must  have  found  it  doubly  hard  to  sever,  and 
sought  a  home  in  the  midst  of  strangers — 
strangers  not  only  to  him,  but  often  to  his  tastes 
and  sentiments  and  ideas. 

"Yet  no  one  can  say  that  he  did  not  find  what 

[138] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

he  sought.  He  was  content  to  lose  his  life,  but 
we  are  all  witnesses  how  abundantly  he  gained 
life  by  the  sacrifices.  If  anyone  ever  found  a 
home  in  the  Church,  Father  Tabb  certainly 
found  one.  Always  a  man  of  great  spirituality, 
of  deep  religious  earnestness,  of  strong  faith 
and  tender  piety,  he  saw  in  Catholicity  what  his 
soul  had  longed  for.  Man  was  there  treated 
as  a  supernatural  being.  Grace  had  its  regular 
means  of  operation  side  by  side  with  nature  in 
a  visible  and  imposing  dispensation  of  Provi 
dence,  that  seemed  to  be  conducted  in  defiance 
of  all  the  laws  of  history,  but  yet  was  willing  to 
have  its  claims  judged  by  the  strictest  historical 
canons.  The  great  truths  of  Revelation  were 
treated,  not  as  something  transcendental  from 
which  the  human  reason  could  not  trust  itself 
to  draw  conclusions,  but  as  matters  on  which 
not  only  the  reason,  but  the  emotions  might  take 
hold,  as  naturally  as  the  child  loves  its  mother, 
and  as  safely  as  a  friend  puts  confidence  in  a 
friend.  Not  only  was  there  belief  in  the  Real 
Presence,  but  that  belief  used  the  same  matter- 
of-fact  logic  which  we  exercise  in  every-day 
affairs.  Catholics,  he  saw,  not  only  defended 
the  dogma  on  principle,  but  paid  visits  to  the 
Blessed  Sacrament.  They  not  only  believed  in 
the  Communion  of  Saints,  but  they  believed  so 
genuinely,  so  frankly,  as  to  ask  the  Saints  for 
their  intercession  with  God,  and  to  pray  for  the 
souls  of  their  departed  friends. 

[139] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

"What  these  Catholic  devotions  became  to 
Father  Tabb  most  of  us  well  know,  and  those 
of  us  who  did  not  know,  knew  their  friend  only 
partially.  He  was  Catholic  to  his  heart's  core. 
As  he  himself  expressed  it  to  a  priest  only  a  few 
weeks  since,  who  asked  him  the  circumstances 
of  his  conversion:  'I  was  always  a  Catholic — 
born  a  Catholic.  Whenever  any  doctrine  of  the 
Church  was  spoken  of,  I  knew  it  was  true  as 
soon  as  I  heard  it.  I  would  have  been  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Church  years  before  I  was  if  I  had 
learned  what  the  Catholic  doctrines  were,  and 
had  known  that  they  were  taught  and  practiced 
in  the  Catholic  Church.'  When  at  last  he  did 
believe  he  believed  with  all  his  strength  and  all 
his  mind;  and  there  is  many  a  Catholic  today 
among  those  who  were  taught  their  religion  at 
their  mother's  knee,  for  whom  Christ's  presence 
on  the  altar,  Mary's  influence  and  authority  in 
Heaven  as  the  Mother  of  Jesus,  the  duty  of 
assisting  the  Souls  in  Purgatory,  took  on  a  new 
meaning  after  they  had  met  this  amiable  man  of 
God,  this  gentle  yet  irresistible  witness  to  the 
unseen. 

"What  is  more  gratifying,  however,  for  us  to 
recall  to  day  as  we  stand  around  the  mortal  re 
mains  of  our  friend  is  not  what  he  got  from 
religion,  but  what  he  gave  in  return.  Chris 
tianity  is  beautiful,  but  it  is  austere.  The  shadow 
of  Calvary  will  obstinately  throw  its  gloom  over 
the  happiness  of  every  Thabor.  Human  life  is 

[140] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

hard  to  idealize.  Christianity  alone  has  suc 
ceeded  in  doing  it,  and  she  has  done  it  not  by 
escaping  from  the  -stern  facts  of  mortal  ex 
istence  or  forgetting  them,  but  by  recognizing 
and  embracing  them  with  a  well-tempered  spirit. 
'Dispose  thyself  to  patience  rather  than  to  con 
solation,'  says  the  Following  of  Christ,  'and  to 
carrying  the  Cross  rather  than  to  gladness';  and 
it  is  the  only  philosophy  that  has  stood  the  test 
successfully.  The  world  is  full  of  quixotic 
plans  for  a  Millenium,  and  they  would  all  be 
gin  by  changing  conditions.  The  Saints,  on  the 
contrary,  ended  by  changing  conditions  about 
them,  but  they  began  by  meeting  them,  by  bow 
ing  to  them  as  the  inscrutable  dispensations  of 
an  All-Holy  Will,  that  needs  not  our  genius  or 
our  talent,  but  only  our  obedience  and  our  docil 
ity,  to  accomplish  its  blessed  purpose,  as  in 
fallible  on  earth  as  in  Heaven. 

"Few  men  have  been  more  deeply  impressed 
with  the  reality  of  Divine  Providence  than 
Father  Tabb,  or  have  paid  it  a  more  sincere  or 
a  more  generous  homage  by  their  lives.  The 
presence  of  God  was  to  him  the  most  luminous 
of  truths.  The  will  of  God  was  the  medium 
through  which  he  looked  at  whatever  befell 
him,  and  the  thought  that  reconciled  him  to  all 
the  asperities  of  his  lot,  and  enabled  him  to  bear 
them  with  a  cheerfulness  and  quiet  patience  that 
will  ever  be  a  precious  memory  to  the  friends 
that  witnessed  them.  His  resignation  under 

[141] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

that  last  great  affliction  which  darkened  his  de 
clining  days  among  us  was  the  fortitude  of  per 
fect  Christian  faith.  'I  have  seen  a  St.  Paul  in 
chains,'  was  the  exclamation  of  Ignatius'  friends 
after  visiting  him  in  his  prison  at  Salamanca. 
It  was  also  my  sentiment  a  few  months  ago, 
when  I  came  out  to  St.  Charles  after  hav 
ing  heard  of  Father  Tabb's  total  and  irrep 
arable  loss  of  eyesight.  In  reply  to  my  in 
quiries  he  answered  that  he  was  never  happier 
in  all  his  life.  Not  a  doubt  now  remained  in 
his  mind  of  what  God  wished  of  him.  'And,'  he 
added,  'if  the  Almighty  came  to  me  and  said: 
"John  Tabb,  you  can  have  your  eyesight  back 
by  asking  for  it,"  I  would  not  ask.  I  would  be 
afraid  of  proving  unfaithful  to  responsibilities 
of  which  I  might  not  be  fully  aware.  Now  I 
know  perfectly  what  is  God's  will,  and  I  am 
resigned  to  it.' 

"I  have  said  that  Father  Tabb's  religion  con 
sisted  not  in  sentiment,  but  service.  The  same 
was  characteristic  of  his  friendship.  He  con 
sidered  no  sacrifice  of  himself  too  great,  no 
demand  upon  his  time  or  his  means  too  large, 
no  personal  concern  or  disappointment  or  aspi 
ration  too  trivial,  no  necessities  of  sickness  too 
repulsive,  when  it  was  question  of  his  friends. 
His  loyalty  resembled  more  the  unselfishness 
and  disinterestedness  of  a  woman's  devotion 
than  any  quality  we  are  accustomed  to  find  in 
man's  love  for  man. 

[142] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

'If  my  grief  his  guerdon  be, 

My  dark  his  light, 
I  count  each  loss  felicity, 

And  bless  the  night/ 

was  the  deliberate  and  unexaggerated  expres 
sion  of  the  affection  he  bestowed  on  those  he 
loved. 

"One  word  more.  It  is  a  great  privilege  to 
stand  here  as  spokesman  for  Father  Tabb's 
friends  on  this  occasion  and  give  utterance  to 
these  few  thoughts,  which  are  not  my  sentiments 
only,  but  the  feelings,  I  am  sure,  of  all  who 
knew  him  well;  and  I  wish  to  use  it  for  the  one 
purpose  of  asking  those  prayers,  which  we  owe 
to  the  deceased  as  friend,  teacher,  and,  above 
all,  as  the  gentle  influence  that  entered  into  the 
spring  tide  of  our  lives  like  a  benediction  from 
Heaven  and  molded  our  sentiments  and  char 
acters  more  than  we  are  aware.  Father  Tabb's 
friendship  did  not  cease  at  the  brink  of  the 
grave;  Death  but  gave  him  a  fuller  oppor 
tunity  of  proving  its  steadfastness  and  devo 
tion.  One  of  the  greatest  consolations  of  his 
priesthood  was  the  power  it  gave  him  of  offering 
the  Holy  Sacrifice  for  his  departed  dear  ones. 
And  though  his  modesty  would  deprecate  every 
other  sentiment  to  which  I  have  given  expres 
sion,  this  one,  I  know,  his  own  lips  would  utter 
were  they  not  deprived  of  the  power:  'Have 
pity  on  me,  at  least  you,  O  my  friends,  for  the 
hand  of  the  Lord  has  touched  me.' ' 

[i43l 


CHAPTER  XXX 

SUPPLEMENTARY.      FATHER  TABB's  SERMON  ON 
THE   ASSUMPTION 

After  having  completed  the  foregoing  sketch 
of  the  venerated  priest-poet,  Father  John  Ban 
nister  Tabb,  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  discover 
a  sermon  delivered  by  him  in  Virginia  on  August 
15,  1894,  the  theme  being  "The  Assumption  of 
the  Blessed  Virgin."  It  is  the  only  piece  of  his 
prose  writing  I  have  ever  seen  in  print;  and  its 
beauty  of  diction,  its  manifestation  of  ardent 
love  and  devotion  to  the  Mother  of  God,  and 
the  clear  exposition  it  contains  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  Assumption,  both  by  logic  and  by  analogy, 
assure  me  that  my  readers  will  esteem  this  ser 
mon  a  happy  finish  to  the  considerations  they 
have  been  asked  to  make  upon  the  life  and 
poems  of  the  saintly  author. 

We  are  indebted  for  this  solitary  specimen 
of  his  powerful  and  persuasive  prose  to  the 
Reverend  Michael  J.  Ahern,  of  Old  Point  Com 
fort,  a  pupil  and  dear  friend  of  Father  Tabb, 
and,  like  him,  a  son  of  the  Old  Dominion,  who, 
after  a  possession  of  twenty  years,  recently  sent 
the  sermon  to  his  friends  and  former  fellow- 
students  of  St.  Charles  College,  the  present  Rev 
erend  Editors  of  the  Baltimore  Catholic  Re 
view.  It  was  published  in  the  issue  of  August 

[144] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

22,  1914,  where  I  saw  it.  There  were  some 
missing  lines,  however,  and  I  was  emboldened 
to  write  to  Father  Ahern  for  their  recovery. 
My  reward  was  a  tasteful  booklet  containing 
the  sermon  printed  under  his  own  supervision, 
the  cover  bearing  beneath  the  title  and  author's 
name  Father  Tabb's  cherished  quatrain  on  "The 
Assumption." 

Nor  Bethlehem  nor  Nazareth 

Apart  from  Mary's  care ; 
Nor  heaven  itself  a  home  for  Him 

Were  not  His  mother  there. 

Father  Ahern  writes:  "I  found  the  holo 
graph  manuscript  of  Father  Tabb's  sermon  on 
the  Assumption  in  one  of  Newman's  works;  I 
think  it  was  'Loss  and  Gain.'  Father  Tabb 
wrote  the  quatrain  (which  served  him  for  a 
text)  in  my  room  at  old  St.  Peter's  Cathedral. 
At  that  time  I  happened  to  be  secretary  to  the 
late  Bishop  Van  de  Vyver  and  had  invited 
Father  Tabb  to  keep  up  his  good  habit  of 
preaching  on  Lady  Day. 

"As  he  was  always  fond  of  me,  he  gladly  con 
sented  and  hence  this  gem.  I  asked  him  for 
the  manuscript,  and  much  against  his  wont  he 
gave  it  to  me.  At  Father  Ed.  Mickle's  Jubilee 
I  mentioned  that  I  had  the  sermon  to  Bishop 
Donohue,  Msgr.  Starr,  Msgr.  Russell  and 
Father  Shandelle,  S.  J.,  and  they  were  of  one 
mind  that  I  should  have  it  published.  I  did  so." 

[i45l 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 
SERMON  ON  THE  ASSUMPTION 

Delivered  by  Father   Tabb  August   15,    1894 

The  meaning  of  the  feast  of  the  Assumption 
is  this :  that  the  body,  as  well  as  the  soul,  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  has  been  taken  up  to  Heaven; 
that  what  will  be  done  for  the  least  of  God's 
saints  in  the  general  resurrection,  has  been  done 
for  her  already.  This,  and  this  only,  is  the 
meaning  of  the  mystery. 

But  a  short  time  ago  a  meeting  was  held  in 
the  State  of  Virginia,  to  which  even  the  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States  considered  it  a  privi 
lege  to  receive  an  invitation;  and  the  object  of 
this  gathering  at  Fredericksburg  was  to  honor 
the  long-neglected  grave  of  a  woman  named 
Mary — the  mother  of  George  Washington. 

Suppose,  when  this  project  was  planned,  that 
some  one  had  raised  this  objection:  that  to  show 
such  respect  to  the  memory  of  the  mother  was 
an  insult  to  her  son;  would  not  people — men, 
women  and  children,  have  scouted  this  idea? 

"But  what,"  the  objector  might  urge,  "did 
Mary  Washington  ever  do  for  this  people? 
She  never  led  our  armies  nor  directed  our  af 
fairs.  'Twas  her  son  that  secured  us  our  liber 
ties,  not  she."  "True,"  we  should  answer,  "but 
like  mother,  like  child,  and  it  was  to  his  mother, 
as  Washington  well  knew,  that  he  owed  his  best 
qualities.  The  influence  of  his  father  he  could 

[146] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

hardly  remember;  and  had  not  his  mother  di 
rected  his  course,  he  would  never  have  been 
what  he  was,  nor  have  done  what  he  did  for 
his  country.  As  the  tree  is  known  by  the  fruit, 
so  the  parent  is  known  by  the  child;  and  in  this 
case  the  training  of  the  mother  alone  bore  its 
fruit  in  her  son." 

Such  is  the  warrant  we  should  claim  for  our 
conduct  in  the  recent  celebration;  and  such  is  the 
warrant  that  the  Church  claims  today  in  paying 
her  homage  to  the  Mother  of  God. 

The  analogy  is  close.  The  common  run  of 
men  bear  the  stamp  of  both  parents.  It  was 
less  so  with  Washington,  who  hardly  knew  his 
father;  and  not  so  at  all  with  Our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  who  on  earth  had  no  father.  His  hu 
manity  came  from  his  Mother  alone.  "He  was 
conceived  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  born  of  the  Virgin 
Mary."  His  virginal  flesh  was  the  fruit  of  a 
Virgin:  His  whole  human  nature  was  the  off 
spring  of  hers.  If,  then,  we  honor  the  mother 
of  Washington,  shall  we  not,  following  the  self 
same  path,  come  to  the  honor  of  the  Mother  of 
God? 

Consider  it  more  closely:  God,  had  He 
willed  it  so,  might  have  created  a  new  man,  like 
Adam,  from  the  dust  of  the  earth.  He  could 
make  the  very  stones  of  the  street,  as  He  tells 
us,  raise  up  children  unto  Abraham.  But  He 
did  not  so  will.  As  He  spake  by  the  mouth  of 
His  holy  prophet,  UA  Virgin  shall  conceive  and 

[147] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

bear  a  Son,  and  shall  call  His  name  Emmanuel. " 
Behold,  what  a  mother!  Virginity  her  birth 
right  and  Motherhood  her  dower,  and  out  of 
both  a  priceless  possession  of  God  as  no  other 
could  possess  Him!  His  flesh  is  her  flesh,  and 
her  flesh  alone,  as  no  other  child's  could  be  that 
had  an  earthly  father.  Bone  of  her  bone,  and 
flesh  of  her  flesh;  closer  than  wedlock  is  the 
union  between  them.  But  this  fact  reaches  far 
ther.  The  motherhood  of  Mary  was  to  bring 
God  on  earth.  UA  Virgin  shall  conceive  and 
bear  a  Son,  and  shall  call  His  name  Emmanuel 
— God  with  us." 

But  in  His  Divine  nature  there  is  no  change. 
He  is  and  was  everywhere  before  the  Incarna 
tion  as  He  was  and  is  now.  The  fact,  then, 
that  He  is  brought  nearer  to  us  is  in  virtue  of 
His  humanity;  and  hence  it  is  that  when  He  is 
one  with  His  Mother,  then,  and  then  only,  is 
He  made  one  with  us. 

"It  behooved  Him  to  suffer,"  says  St.  Paul, 
"for  our  salvation";  but  the  power  to  feel  suf 
fering,  much  less  to  die,  was  impossible  even  to 
the  Almighty  God,  except  through  that  nature 
that  His  Mother  bestowed.  Nor  does  Mary's 
claim  to  our  reverence  stop  here.  What  she 
was  to  her  Son  in  the  order  of  generation  she 
was  destined  to  be  also  in  the  order  of  influence. 
Had  she  died  at  the  time  of  Our  Blessed  Lord's 
birth,  she  had  fulfilled  the  prophecy.  The  Vir 
gin  had  conceived  and  borne  a  Son;  Emmanuel 

[148] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

was  with  us ;  the  Incarnation  was  accomplished. 
But  it  was  not  so  to  be.  She  was  to  think  for 
Him,  speak  for  Him,  act  for  Him;  wrap  Him 
in  swaddling  clothes  and  lay  Him  in  the  man 
ger;  flee  with  Him  from  Herod,  and  bring  Him 
back  from  Egypt;  find  Him  in  the  Temple  and 
return  with  Him  to  Nazareth,  where  for  thirty 
years  He  is  subject  to  her.  Nay;  she  must  fol 
low  Him  even  unto  Calvary,  and  stand  in  that 
darkness  at  the  foot  of  the  Cross,  that  hers,  the 
first  face  He  had  looked  upon  on  earth,  might 
be  also  the  last. 

Thus  did  our  Blessed  Lord  make  himself  a 
debtor  to  the  Mother  He  had  chosen.  And 
what  shall  be  her  recompense? 

If  the  servant  that  had  faithfully  used  the 
two  talents  was  put  over  five  cities,  and  he  that 
used  five  talents  ruled  over  ten,  what  reward 
shall  our  Blessed  Lord  give  unto  His  Mother, 
to  whom  was  entrusted,  not  the  treasure  of  this 
world,  but  the  unreserved  guardianship  of  His 
own  Divine  Person?  Shall  he  not  do  for  her 
all  and  much  more  than  He  ever  did  for  others? 
Yet  Enoch  and  Elias  had  been  bodily  trans 
lated.  The  son  of  the  widow,  the  daughter  of 
the  ruler,  the  servant  of  the  centurion  had  been 
raised  from  the  dead;  and  Lazarus,  after  four 
days'  corruption  of  the  grave,  had  been  called 
back  to  life  again.  What,  then,  remains  to  be 
done  for  His  Mother? 

[149] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

Even  had  tradition  taught  us  nothing  of  this 
feast,  would  it  not  seem  a  necessity  of  love  that 
where  her  Son's  body  was,  hers  should  be  also? 
It  was  sin  that  broke  the  union  ot  body  and  soul 
that  God  had  joined  together.  But  in  her  was 
no  sin.  She  had  paid  indeed  the  penalty  as  her 
Son  himself  had  done,  and  why  should  her  spot 
less  flesh  linger  in  the  tomb?  He  had  hastened 
the  hour  of  His  own  Resurrection;  why  should 
He  not  anticipate  the  time  of  His  Mother's, 
for  whom,  though  He  told  her  His  hour  was 
not  come,  He  had  wrought  His  first  miracle? 
It  was  but  to  give  her  a  privilege  beforehand 
that  all  were  to  have  in  the  general  resurrection. 
Why  delay  it  till  then? 

An  Apostle  had  said  to  Him  once  upon  earth : 
"Lord,  show  us  the  Father";  and  may  we  not 
think  that  the  citizens  of  Heaven,  adoring  the 
Humanity  at  the  right  hand  of  God,  might  ask 
of  Him,  "Show  us  thy  Mother,  O  Lord!  Thy 
nature  is  twofold,  and  we  see  but  one  source 
of  it.  Show  us  the  Blessed  Mother  from  whom 
the  other  came.  We  will  say  to  her,  'Hail !  full 
of  grace!'  as  did  Gabriel;  we  will  cry,  as  did 
Elizabeth,  'Whence  is  this  to  us!'  As  among 
women,  we  would  call  her  blessed  here;  for  to 
which  of  the  angels  canst  thou  say  'Thou  art  my 
Mother?'"  And  would  not  His  own  Heart 
have  prompted  the  request?  After  His  own 
suffering  and  death  in  this  world,  it  seemed  but 
the  least  He  could  do  for  His  Father  to  ascend 

[150] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

to  Him  in  Heaven;  and  now  when  her  course 
is  accomplished  on  earth,  it  seems  but  the  least 
He  could  do  for  His  Mother  to  take  her  home 
with  Him.  Has  He  forgotten  Bethlehem?  Has 
He  forgotten  Nazareth?  Is  Heaven  itself  a 
home  for  Him  in  the  absence  of  His  Mother? 
She  sleeps,  but  her  heart  waketh!  Shall  He 
not  shorten  the  time  of  her  sleep?  ''Arise,  my 
beloved,  my  fair  one,  my  dove,"  are  the  words 
of  His  canticle.  "Let  us  go  hence  together! 
The  winter  is  past!" 

And  she  in  the  joy  of  awakening,  exclaims: 
"Behold,  I  come  quickly !  Yea  :  let  us  go  hence ! 
The  wings  of  the  morning  are  awaiting  us ! 
Let  us  rise  as  did  the  turtle  doves  I  offered  in 
Thy  Childhood  and  flee  unto  Thy  mountain, 
my  God  and  my  Son !" 

DEO  GRATIAS. 


[151! 


CHAPTER    XXXI 

ST.    CHARLES  AND  THE  SULPITIANS.      A 
MEMORIAL  TO  THE  POET-PRIEST 

There  are  few  chapters  in  Church  History, 
I  think,  more  touching,  more  redolent  of  ex 
alted  virtue  and  heroic  sacrifice  than  the  story 
of  the  advent  of  the  early  Sulpitians  to  our  bar 
ren  shores  in  1791,  and  their  labors  under  that 
Prince  of  noble  Prelates,  the  Most  Reverend 
John  Carroll,  first  Archbishop  of  Baltimore. 
The  heart  leaps  with  high  desires  and  the  eyes 
grow  moist  as  we  read  of  those  renowned  the 
ologians  and  eminent  professors,  many  of  them 
directors  of  famous  European  seminaries,  a 
Nagot,  a  Tessier,  a  Flaget,  a  Gamier,  and 
others  of  equal  sanctity  and  erudition,  exiling 
themselves  from  their  beloved  France  to  open 
in  a  strange  land  a  mission  that  meant  inevitably 
trials,  hardships  and  privations. 

But  a  brief  space  after,  when  the  horrors  of 
the  French  Revolution  burst  upon  the  world, 
when  the  blood  of  thousands  was  flowing  from 
the  guillotine,  when  the  temples  of  God  in 
which  they  had  worshiped  were  destroyed  or 
profaned,  and  the  pure  souls  of  their  training 
were  scattered  afar  from  the  sanctuary  on  which 
they  had  built  their  hopes,  those  holy  and  self- 
denying  Sulpitians  were  laying  the  foundations 

[152] 


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THE  PRIEST-POET 

of  the  City  of  God  in  other  equally  pure  and 
lofty  souls,  destined  to  a  more  arduous  and  ex 
tended  mission — dedicated  to  serve  and  com 
fort  souls  dispersed  over  the  great  and  inhos 
pitable  areas  of  our  own  rising  Republic. 

St.  Mary's  Seminary  was  their  creation  and 
inherited  their  spirit;  and  St.  Charles  is  the 
offspring  of  this  noble  institution.  Those  daunt 
less  pioneers  of  San  Sulpice,  though  defeated 
and  defeated  in  this  last  dear  project  of  their 
hearts,  at  length  conquered  the  stubborn  force 
of  circumstances;  and  the  cornerstone  of  St. 
Charles,  the  college  of  priestly  vocations,  was 
laid  by  the  aged  patriot,  Charles  Carroll  of  Car- 
rollton,  in  Ellicott  City,  Md.,  in  1831. 

Since  then  nearly  a  century  has  flown  by — a 
guardian  spirit  on  wings  of  hope,  bearing  up 
to  the  throne  of  the  Eternal  uncomputed  treas 
ures  of  holiness  and  merit  from  that  temple  of 
His  love,  that  home  of  peace  and  learning,  that 
nursery  of  young  Levites,  St.  Charles  College. 

And  there  among  his  saintly  brethren  of  the 
priesthood,  guarding  and  nourishing  and  loving 
the  ardent,  intrepid  youths  Providence  intrusted 
to  his  care,  our  priest-poet  watched  happily, 
day  by  day,  divine  grace  working  its  hidden 
wonders  in  their  souls,  like  the  uSap"  in  the 
tree,  its  appropriate  symbol : — 

Strong  as  the  sea,  and  silent  as  the  grave, 

It  ebbs  and  flows  unseen ; 
Flooding  the  earth — a  fragrant  tidal  wave — 

With  mist  of  deepening  green. 

[i53l 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

But  the  "fragrant  tidal  wave"  of  grace,  only 
angels  behold  "flooding  the  earth" — kindling 
a  new  and  heavenly  life  in  the  hearts  of  men. 

Alas!  pilgrimages  may  no  longer  be  made 
to  the  spots  rendered  dear  by  Father  Tabb's 
presence.  The  old  St.  Charles  College  of  Elli- 
cott  City,  so  cherished  by  thousands  as  their 
Alma  Mater,  became  a  prey  to  the  flames  in 
March,  1911,  and  was  utterly  destroyed. 
Father  Tabb's  friends  felt  that  it  was  through 
a  benign  providence  he  was  called  away  before 
this  catastrophe  befell  the  sacred  home  around 
which  the  tendrils  of  his  heart  had  so  long  been 
twined.  How  profound  and  lasting  would  have 
been  his  sorrow! 

Since  his  saintly  spirit  left 

Its  earthly  habitation  void  and  chill, 

and  went  forth  to  receive  the  crown  of  justice 
from  his  liege  Lord  and  Master,  six  times  the 
spring  flowers  have  bloomed  and  faded  on  his 
grave  in  Hollywood  Cemetery. 

His  memory  has  not  faded  away;  he  still 
lives  in  the  hearts  of  thousands  whom  he  bene 
fited.  St.  Charles  College  still  breathes  of  his 
presence.  In  many  a  pulpit  voices  are  raised  in 
defense  of  the  faith  that  are  now  pregnant  with 
power  because  of  his  cultured  teachings. 

It  is  a  matter  of  surprise,  therefore,  that  there 
has  been  no  movement  as  yet  to  create  a 
Memorial  Father  Tabb  Scholarship  for  stu- 

[154] 


THE  PRIEST-POET 

dents  at  St.  Charles  College,  the  institution  so 
dear  to  his  heart,  so  embalmed  with  his  pres 
ence  for  thirty-five  years  as  professor,  priest 
and  poet. 

No  tribute  to  his  memory  could  be  more 
grateful  to  Father  Tabb.  A  poet's  lovers  and 
admirers  hasten  after  his  death  to  erect  a  statue 
of  their  favorite,  or  a  monument  or  tablet  en 
chased  with  his  name,  with  a  panegyric  of  his 
worth,  that  the  eyes  of  men  may  witness  to  a 
love  which  extends  beyond  the  grave — a  loyalty 
that  can  cheat  even  death  of  the  beauty  and 
grace  of  its  beloved  and  keep  his  name  and 
fame  ever  alive  in  the  hearts  of  men.  How 
beautiful  is  this — an  honor  to  some  of  the 
noblest  traits  of  human  nature!  But  to  raise 
a  spiritual  memorial  to  the  beloved  dead  for 
the  eyes  of  God  and  His  angels !  to  place  under 
the  sheltering  roof  of  God's  temple  a  soul  that 
longs  uto  serve  Him  in  holiness  and  justice  all 
the  days  of  his  life,"  a  soul  that  shall  raise 
daily  to  Him  the  Sacred  Victim  of  our  altars, 
shall  spend  himself  for  the  conversion  and 
guidance  of  souls  in  the  way  of  truth  and  sanc 
tity — what  more  glorious  to  God  than  an  offer 
ing  like  this — what  more  precious  to  His  Holy 
Church  than  such  an  ever-living  memorial  of  her 
departed  Levite ! 

It  seems  to  me  that  only  the  suggestion  is 
necessary  to  Father  Tabb's  friends  to  set  the 
wheels  of  liberality  in  motion  toward  this  great 

[155] 


JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB 

end.     For  a  consummation  so  devoutly  to  be 
wished  we  rely  not  alone  on  the  long  procession 
of    grateful    and   appreciative    students   whom 
Father  Tabb  so  ably  led  through  the  pleasant 
paths  of  literature,  not  alone  on  his  brethren 
of  the  priesthood  to  whom  his  life  and  writings 
were  an  honor,  not  alone  on  the  hosts  of  friends 
so  near  and  dear  to  his  heart;  with  equal  cer 
tainty  of  response  we  may  appeal  to  the  wide 
circle  of  his  readers,  who  for  long  years  have 
derived  untold  pleasure  from  the  poems,  have 
been    uplifted,    taught    and    made    better  ' 
by  the  heavenly  influence  of 
JOHN  BANNISTER  TABB. 


156 


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